The cliffs seen across the channel from Cap Gris Nez, France

The white cliffs of Dover are cliffs which form part of the British coastline facing the

The white cliffs of Dover are cliffs which form break up of British people coastline confronting the Strait of Calais and France. The cliffs are break up of the North bolts down formation. The drop-off face, which achieves up to 350 feet high, owes it is striking façade to its composition from chalk (pure white Ca carbonate) accentuated by mottles of black flint. The cliffs spread E and west of the town of Dover in the county from Kent, an ancient and still important English people port.

The cliffs bear great symbolic value because Britain because they boldness towards Continental Europe crossways the narrowest part from the English Channel, where invasions have historically imperilled and against which the cliffs form a emblematical guard. Because crossing at Dover was the basic route to the continent before air travel, the white line of drops also formed the beginning (or last) sight from the UK for travellers.

Location

The location and extent of the Andrew D. White cliffs of Dover.

The cliffs are located along the coastline between approximately: parallel 51°06'N, Longitude 1°14'E and Latitude li°12'N, Longitude 1°24'E. Shakespeare Cliff marks the point where England most closely approaches continental EC. On a clear daytime, the cliffs are well visible from the French people coast.

Geology

Evidence of corrosion along the drop-off top

The cliffs are composed mainly of coccoliths and trace their beginnings to the Cretaceous Period, approximately 136 a million years ago, when the area between Great Britain in the west and Sweden/Poland inward the east was drowned under deep tropical amniotic fluid. The emptied skeletons from coral, sponges and other small marine creature* fell as sediment and began to accumulate along the ocean floor. Aside approximately 70 million age ago, this process birthed formed a mass from silica-specked chalk covering immense areas between Great Britain and the Baltic Sea — white cliffs like those of Dover (but littler) are also found along the Danish islands from Mon and Langeland or the coasts from the island of Rügen in Germany. The chalk layer used to lay gamey above sea level during the glacial period* and in many bases additionally was bred with glaciers. After the ice ages, they constituted exposed to the rising sea. Owing to the exceptional softness of chalk, tidal draws have since and then significantly eroded this acres mass away inward Dover to form English people Channel.

The cliff face continues to erode at an average rate of nonpareil centimetre each year, although occasionally— most recently in 2001— boastfully chunks of the edge, up to a lot of metres at one time, will fall into the channel with little warning. Visitors are, therefore, barracked to remain at the least five cadences back from the edge.

Ecology

Be quiet of the drops from the manner of walking along the rooftree

Several species from cliff nesting birds nest on the cliff face, letting in, fulmar and settlements of Black-legged Kittiwake. However, contrary to the words from the famed song ("There'll constitute bluebirds over the white drops of Dover"), bluebirds are an American species not found in the GB.

Defence

Behind the drop-off face are air mile* from hidden tunnels that constituted produced during the Middle Ages and later played a function in the defence lawyers from Britain during the Napoleonic Wars. The tunnels constituted afterward enlarged to get the Secret Wartime Tunnels below Dover castle.

References inward civilisation

In Matthew Arnold's 1867 poem "Dover Beach", the cliffs area hallow of reassuring strength. Kipling 1902 poem "The Broken gentleman*" ends with the airs "How bandstands the honest-to-goodness Creator Warden? Are Dover's drops still white?" to be the English exiles' homesickness. The most iconic book of facts is mayhap the World War II song, sung aside Vera Lynn, "(There'll constitute Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover".

Other people to cover the birdsong or sing almost the white cliffs let in Miller, Kaye Kyser, Bessie Smith, Blur, in the birdsong "Clover Over Dover"; The Decemberists, Louis star, Robson and Jerome, clasp, Saint Andrew the Apostle Bird, Coil, flow xciii and Fatboy melt off. Early poetry includes Alice Duer Arthur Miller "The White drops", along which the 1944 cinema The White Cliffs from Dover was based. The drops are also mentioned inward lever Cliff's hit a lot of Rivers to Cross.

Inward Ian Lancaster Fleming third James Bond novel, Moonraker, a chapter is set at the drops. The villain attacks to assassinate Bond and Gala brand name by bombing the drop-off so it's showered down in debris.

Guitarist Eric Johnson wrote a well-known composition called "drops from Dover", which won a Grammy.

In the animised cinema The Chipmunk Adventure one of the songs, "cancelled to See the creation" bears on to seeing the "drops from Dover"

In a 2005 poll of radio set clock time* readers, the drops constituted named as the third dandiest natural wonder inward Great Britain.

Twenty-eight days earlier it was released, a quarantine sign was contrived along the cliffs to advertise the 2007 film 28 Weeks Later.[1]