Overlying these across much the larger part of the 'national park' are silts and clays of Flandrian age, which together with peat deposits form the broad flats of the Waveney, Yare, Bure and Thurne valleys.
Extraction of the peat in historic times, and subsequent flooding of the workings, has resulted in the pattern of shallow lakes or 'broads for which the area is widely known.
[2] The majority of the rocks within the Cairngorms National Park belong to the Dalradian Supergroup, a thick sequence of sands, muds and limestones that were deposited between about 800 and 600 million years ago on the margins of the former continent of Laurentia.
The subsequent collision of Baltica with Laurentia caused the ‘Scandian event’ which involved further folding and faulting of the Dalradian rock sequence.
The area was not subject to glaciation during the Quaternary ice ages but periglacial processes have contributed to the character of the modern landscape.
Exmoor is formed largely by a suite of mudstones and sandstones of Devonian age which are folded into a broad east-west oriented anticline during the Variscan orogeny and well exposed along the Bristol Channel coast.
Exmoor lay just to the south of the Quaternary ice-sheets but deposits of head (frost-shattered rock fragments building on and at the foot of hillsides) date from this time.
[7] The Lake District National Park is formed from a core of lower Palaeozoic sedimentary and volcanic rocks, underpinned by a granitic batholith.
Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park is a mountainous region with good exposure of the Proterozoic and Palaeozoic bedrock.
There are few rock exposures beyond limited outcrops in the banks of streams, the faces of working and abandoned gravel pits, and some low coastal cliffs.
The sedimentary rocks are intruded by the Great Whin Sill along the outcrop of which the Romans built sections of Hadrian's Wall.
The exposed central limestone strata and surrounding gritstone edges are the result of erosion of the Derbyshire Dome formation.
The Pembrokeshire Coast National Park is formed from igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks from the late Precambrian through all Palaeozoic periods to the Carboniferous.
The geology of Snowdonia is largely characterized by a succession of sedimentary and extrusive igneous rocks of Cambrian, Ordovician and Silurian age which were faulted and folded during the Caledonian Orogeny.
The V-profile river valleys that had been cut into this upland area during the previous tens of millions of years were modified by widespread glaciation during successive Quaternary ice ages resulting in the present day landforms.