The Bendricks

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The Bendricks is a stretch of coastline and an important fossil site in the Vale of Glamorgan in south Wales. It sits on the north coast of the Bristol Channel, between Barry and Sully, on the foreshore near the Barry Docks. A tidal limestone cape called Bendrick Rock sticks out into the sea, and only the top is usually visible at high tide (very high tides can cover it). The area is a protected Site of Special Scientific Interest because of its unique geology and fossils. The rocks here are mainly mudstones, siltstones and small sandstones from the Mercia Mudstone group, formed when silt settled in a shallow muddy sea during the Triassic period. The Cadoxton River reaches the Bristol Channel here through a concrete channel, after being redirected during the construction of Barry Docks in the 1880s.

Inland are HMS Cambria and the former Sully Hospital. The Bendricks is famous for 220-million-year-old dinosaur footprints from the Late Triassic. Some footprints are in the National Museum and Galleries of Wales in Cardiff. The BBC featured the Bendricks in a program about the Natural History of Wales. The footprints were first found in 1974 and belong to three kinds of dinosaurs: Anchisauripus and Grallator (two small meat-eating dinosaurs) and Tetrasauripus (an early long-necked dinosaur).

You can reach the site by a path around the security fence near HMS Cambria at Hayes Point, Sully, or along the coastal path from the public slipway at the Vale of Glamorgan recycling centre on Hayes Road, Sully. The footprints can be hard to spot, especially at high tide, so they are often easier to see after high tide or when the sun is low and shadows help show their shapes. Bendrick Road is a nearby small street with about 50 houses.