Geography of Dorset Channel. It stretches from Lyme Regis in the west to Highcliffe in the east. The main settlements on the coastline are, from west to east, Lyme Regis, Weymouth, Swanage, Poole, Bournemouth and Christchurch, although the majority of the coastline is not covered by urban development. The Dorset coastline contains a great variety of coastal landforms, including cliffs, bays, headlands, a large natural harbour and a barrier beach. Almost the entire length of the Dorset coast forms the major part of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site, designated in 2001. This coast is notable for the variety in its geological structure
Geology of Dorset Geology of Dorset Dorset (or archaically, Dorsetshire) is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. Covering an area of ; it borders Devon to the west, Somerset to the north-west, Wiltshire to the north-east, and Hampshire to the east. The great variation in its landscape owes much to the underlying geology which includes an almost unbroken sequence of rocks from 200 Ma to 40 Ma and superficial deposits from 2 Ma to the present. In general the oldest rocks (Early Jurassic) appear in the far west of the county, with the most recent (Eocene) in the