North Cornwall is an area of outstanding natural beauty that is of great geological and scientific interest.

The rest of the district lies on Devonian sedimentary strata and the granite of Bodmin Moor.

During the Variscan Orogeny, which affected the entire Cornish coast, the cliffs were pushed up from underneath the sea, creating the overlapping strata.

The cliffs around Bude are the only ones in Cornwall that are made of Carboniferous sandstone, as most of the Cornish coast is geologically formed of Devonian slate, granite and Precambrian metamorphic rocks).

Most of the lowland areas have good agricultural land used either for mixed or dairy farming.