Marsden Bay

Over the years the mighty North Sea has fashioned the coastline into dramatic cliffs and bays with stacks and caves to explore throughout the year. Marsden Bay is home to one of England's most important seabird colonies with thousands of pairs of Kittiwakes, Fulmars, Gulls and Cormorants. For an unusual lunch or refreshment stop take the lift or the cliff stairs to the Marsden Grotto pub. The pub was hewn out of the rocks at a time when smugglers roamed the shores. Legends of smugglers, wrecks and colourful characters abound. The ghost of John the Jibber, who died a long and lingering death, suspended in a bucket halfway down the cliff face after betraying fellow smugglers to the Customs Men is said to haunt Marsden Bay.

The rocks, formed almost 250 million years ago, are Permian Magnesium Limestone and are of great interest to geologists world-wide. The limestones were originally formed as muds on the floor and flanks of shallow tropical sea that stretched from Greenland to eastern Poland, at a time when Britain lay deep within a great continent only just north of the Equator.