Giant's Rock

The Giant's Rock, also known as Giant's Quoit or The Moonstone, is a large boulder on the rocky foreshore. It is composed of a type of gneiss containing the semi-precious mineral garnet not found anywhere else in the UK. It has been suggested that the rock could have been picked-up by a glacier in Northern Europe which eventually carried it to the sea.

Since sea levels were much lower during Ice Ages, one theory is that the boulder could have been temporarily parked on an ice sheet (possibly in Greenland) whilst sea levels rose back to levels similar to current ones.

With warming temperatures, the ice containing the rock would have eventually crumbled into icebergs. The rock, trapped in one of these icebergs, floated here and became stranded on the high tide line. The ice melted away to free the imprisoned rock, leaving it on the shoreline where it is today. The boulder weighs in excess of 50 tons. From a back-of-envelope density calculation, the iceberg would likely have been in excess of 1500 tons in order to float with the heavy rock inside it.