St Loy

St Loy's Cove is a small wooded valley and beach in the civil parish of St Buryan in Cornwall, England, UK. It is located two miles to the south of St Buryan churchtown, and between Penberth and Lamorna.^[1] There are just a few buildings in the cove, one of which, Cove Cottage, provides bed and breakfast and a cafe. St Loy's is within the Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), the Boscawen SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest) and is part of a GCR Geological Conservation Review site. The South West Coast Path passes through the cove.

Geography

The stream at the bottom of the valley flows out to sea under a boulder storm beach backed by soft orange–brown cliffs of head deposits formed by solifluction when the climate was similar to that of Greenland's today. These cliffs are easily eroded and amongst the rounded boulders on the beach are irregular shaped granite stones that have fallen from the cliff.^[2]

Boscawen SSSI

The Boscawen SSSI, which encompasses the whole of the cove, "is a nationally important site for Quaternary geomorphology and Quaternary stratigraphy. Coastal exposures at the site show a sequence of granitic shore platform overlain in turn by raised beach deposits and head deposits".^[3]

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Eligius^[b] (French: Éloi; 11 June 588 – 1 December 660), venerated as Saint Eligius, was a Frankish goldsmith, courtier and bishop who was chief counsellor to Dagobert I and later Bishop of Noyon–Tournai. His deeds were recorded in Vita Sancti Eligii, written by his friend Audoin of Rouen.

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Eligius took advantage of this royal favour to obtain alms for the poor and to ransom captive Romans, Gauls, Bretons, Moors and especially Saxons, who were arriving daily at the slave market in Marseilles.

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Eligius was a source of edification at the royal court, where he and his friend Audoin of Rouen lived according to the strict Irish monastic rule that had been introduced into Gaul by Columbanus