Geologists delayed by eruption

Well the news this morning is that the volcano is still erupting and the wind is still in the north so that there are unlikely to be any flights until the wind shifts which won’t be for at least another 4 days, although apparently the Dutch and German airlines are sending up test flights to check. All rather an unknown though. I feel very sorry for insurance companies – perhaps they will wriggle out of it though, in which case I’ll feel sorry for the airlines. I wonder how on Earth they will recoup the losses from cancelled flights?
Contact at lunchtime (shame about lunch but hey it was salad!) established that the members of our group that were heading towards Bilbao/Santander had got to Bilbao and, a little later that, rather oddly, both drivers from one car had boarded a ferry and left the car and remaining passengers stranded and driverless at the ferry port! Fortunately we eventually (via numerous phone calls and texts and a very helpful SolMar rep in Bilbao) managed to organise that the driver from another car could take the stranded one to  the depot at Bilbao airport and later heard that the group had gone onward to Santander to take a chance on getting on a ferry there – presumably on Thursday?
Celebrated by having my first swim of the year in our pool

Adios Almeria

We had a very short night – a phone call at midnight from one of the group who had heard their flight was cancelled and didn’t know what to do... neither did we at that time of night! ... then up at 5.20 am to make sure everyone knew flights from Murcia cancelled (except possible the one to Edinburgh might go). They all decided to go up to the airport anyway which left us free to tidy up, finish packing and drive over to La Paz.
A bit of a panic over one set of keys until we rang Trevor who reminded us he had left them under a stone in the garden when he and Janet had left for the airport the day before ... doh!
The weather was still pretty damp but it improved as we drove west along the pretty road past Sorbas and Tabernas to the A92. We stopped at the Venta del Compadre which is very traditional country venta mainly used by the local campesinos and hunters. Well hung with hams and shoulders of pork being tobacco-smoked in situ by the clientele who were well supplied with bar snacks in the form of unpeeled raw garlic cloves to go with their breakfast aguardiente! We had the usual dos cortados.
The A92 is a good fast road west and it was an easy journey though fascinating to see the landslip scars still being repaired as we drove through the Sierra de Huétor.
When we arrived, Mick and Jayne were hard at work putting the place to rights after the last visitors who had just left that morning (luckily they had driven down from the UK, bringing all their ski gear with them, so unaffected by volcano problems!) and after a snack we crashed upstairs for a couple of hours to keep out of their way and catch up on sleep before a relaxing evening and early night!

Red rocks, purple rocks, railways and reefs

Last day and back to Cabo de Gata – the northern end this time, but starting with a stop at Cala Cuerva that we had missed at the end of Day 4. The rocas rojos y violetas  are Cinto ignimbrite from the Rodalquilar caldera that have been hydrothermally altered to dramatic shades of violets and ochres that show to tremendous advantage in this foreshore setting.

However, before we looked at these we checked out the Messinian marine sediments on the southern side of the cala where we found puzzling ‘balls’ of concentric spheres of layered material – oncolites?
LATER... I've now found out that these are rodoliths/rhodoliths - balls created by red algae - see  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodolith . Thanks to Professor Paul Wright for that info on a trip to Blaen Onneu quarry!

Onward to the old mining town of Rodalquilar for coffee before going to have a look at the Casa de Los Volcanes where there is a truly excellent interpretative exhibition of the area’s geology. Unfortunately it was shut for the day as the curator was unwell so I’ll need to post the photos I took last summer of the explanation panels.
We had a damp lunch in Agua Amarga – I’d had unrealised visions of a relaxed ‘last lunch’ at a chiringuito by the beach bathed in spring sunshine but it piddled down so not as relaxing as planned. The headland above the village is a fascinating archaeological site – the seaward end of the mineral line from Lucaiñena and a look around revealed scraps of ore on the ground which we identified as magnetite by their cubic habit and ability to attract compass needles.
Final stops were on Mesa Roldan and the beach to the north to examine the relationships between dacite volcanic domes and reef facies and we wound our way back to Turre over the Sierra Cabrera past the stops from Day 3.

Ichnofossils, ultra-K volcanics and an unexpected eruption!

The barbecue planned for the evening meant that this day was planned to be a tad shorter than others: we put our faith in Emily and this time found the fossil site – though sadly diminished. Still, we found quite a few Palaeodictyon and Helminthoidea etc in a single bank of rubble along the side of new agricultural buildings built on the old quarry.

An unexpected bonus here was a Greater Spotted Cuckoo which obviously enjoyed having its picture taken.

About now news began to filter through, initially via a text from Sue, about the eruption of Eyafjellajokull in Iceland which would play a major part in difficulties getting the group back to the UK though we didn’t really realise the enormity of the problem at the time.

After a coffee fix in Sorbas we headed out into the campo north of Cariatiz to drive a transect of the Sierra de los Filabres. The track initially seemed a lot better than last summer although we took a wrong turn, came to a washout, and had to retrace our steps before we finally got on the right road. Once there it was really good with metagranite + tourmaline and gneiss and marble. However by the time we reached the summit of the hills we were in dense cloud and very muddy roadworks so decided to head back onto the main road west of Lubrin to a known marble and amphibolite exposure. Sadly it was yet another victim of recent resurfacing, crash barriering and ditching and it was impossible to stop to look at it. 

Luckily we were able to stop east of Bédar to look at the ‘granite’ there – really banded and augen gneiss really before going on to Cabezo de María near Vera. This fascinating ultra-K volcano lies just west of the town of Vera and is the type locality for verite, an ultra-K lamproite. It lends itself to exploration as 3 tracks dissect it with good exposures alongside of the metamorphic rocks and basin sediments as well as the volcanic rocks themselves which include peperite and possible pillows as well as glassy lava full of lined vesicles.

The BBQ was excellent – Bert cooked, Trevor washed up, and Sally’s team had shopped well for chops, sausages and so on and made masses of salads. Jan and I benefited to the tune of a bottle of Sangre de Toro and €40 for a meal out.

Copper and Cowboys

A trip over to the west of Almeria province took us first to Los Millares, a well fortified Chalcolithic site some 5.5 ka old. After seeing Bronze and Iron age forts in the UK, and the hut circles on Dartmoor,  it was fascinating to see one where there were not only foundations of the huts and workshops but also of the stone and mud walls that surrounded them. They must have felt the need to protect themselves from the surrounding, presumably less advanced, hunter gatherers or farmers to whom they sold their copper arrowheads and other implements.

A reconstructed area helped a good deal with visualising what the original might have been like.

Next stop was Las Salinas, west of Tabernas. The travertine deposits here are fascinating, and the badland setting something really unusual in Europe. At first glance it looked as though there were beds of lilac–hued rocks ourtcopping across the hillsides but drawing closer we found they were carpeted with small annual plants with lilac flowers and glaucous leaves that seemed to be some sort of crucifer. They covered acres of the erosion gullied hillside. After the wet winter there was a lot of salt efflorescing on the ground surface and, very unusually, the ramblas were muddy and even running with water in places!

The Rambla de la Sierra just west of Tabernas is a superb field stop though sadly the cowboy on horseback at the entrance to the track wasn’t on duty today.  Two ‘sets’ of sediments date from the Tortonian-Serrevallian and then from the Messinian. The former are continental and separated from the latter marine sediments by an angular unconformity. Faults and channels can be seen in 3D as the rambla meanders which make this a great place for visualising the ancient landscape.


After a short excursion to see the Plataforma Solar the troops were howling for a caffeine fix (not to mention a cake fix... Colin and Annie...) and we found a pair of cafés – we’d been to the further one before but went to the nearer one which seemed to be aimed at rock music and Harley Davidson fans, rearranged the furniture to sit in a group in the sun and relaxed before heading back to Turre. ... well some did!  Jan and I, with passenger Gill in tow (sorry Gill - no choice!), headed out into the campo to see if we could identify the best route to tomorrow’s first stop. Sadly, although we recognised irrigation hydrants we failed to find the site we had been to before – though the roads seemed much better graded than 5 years before! A bit of exploration on Google Earth that evening pinpointed the Lat and Long which duly went into the satnav for Emily to have a think about overnight.

Birds & volcanoes - Cabo de Gata

Cabo de Gata area today, starting at Las Amoladeras centro de visitantes where they were very helpful and we saw some interesting snails and a pair of copulating lizards. Then on to the bird hide to take advantage of Mick’s expertise identifying red legged stilts, avocets etc as well as some flamingos, before going on to the cape itself.

At Punto Bajo just to the east there is a lovely exposure of a columnar jointed dacite flow which used to be quarried for cobbles and has silica (agate = the ‘gata’ in Cabo de Gata) and some patches of very white, altered ignimbrite patches, the most splendid of which is the triangle of the Vela Blanca (white sail) ignimbrite exposed in the cliffs to the east.
After lunch and a group photo Mick decided he wanted to stay and take a closer look at the flowers whilst we went on round to coastal exposures to the north.

The beaches at Monsul are only a few km away but the cliff road has been closed to cars for a long time so you have to go make a big circuit round to the west to San José. Excellent graded track out to these popular beaches and the massive autobrecciated flows and dacite domes there were well worth seeing.

Then finally north to Los Escullos to see the aeolianite oolite dunes + root casts: these were formed during the last glacial when, presumably, oolite dunes on the sea floor were exposed as available for transport by stronger wind.

Basins and ranges

The Sorbas basin transect always makes a good first day on this trip because of the stunning gypsum evaporite deposits. We met up with Mick our birding friend on the way to the first stop, had a coffee at the Cuevas de Sorbas and then walked up the Rambla del Infierno to the cave at the far end (picture). Plenty of discussion on the way which continued in Sorbas Rambla and road cut and the Rambla de Gochar before calling in at the Centro de Visitantes Los Yesares in Sorbas where after David and Ted had spotted them we were lucky enough to get hold of half a dozen super (free!) booklets: Geology of the Arid Zone of Almeria ISBN 84-933537-0-1 which we distributed around the cars.

Having done a basin on Day 1, Day 2 was a ‘sierras’ day – the Sierra de Alhamilla in this case. We started off though with a visit to Cerro del Joyazo, the ‘garnet volcano’ east of Nijar. The service road along the A7 has been much improved and well graded so there was only about 0.5 km of rougher track. Last winter’s rains seemed to have washed out plenty of garnets – there were lots of pink patches in the sand on the track in and we also managed to find a lot of cordierite (this is original type locality of the blue crystalline version discovered by Cordier), sillimanite and lower crust xenoliths material (picture) of black and white gneiss with garnet, cordierite and sillimanite porphyroblasts. After last June’s recce we had high hopes of the Níjar-Lucaiñena traverse across the S de Alhamilla and it started well with the basin and Alpujárride stops and the first of the Nevado-Filabride exposures. Lunchtime also gave us a sight of a Montpellier snake but though Mick chased it up the bank he wasn’t able to catch it to give us a closer look. Sadly though after that the local highways people have now put up crash barriers effectively cutting off access to all our carefully noted parking places. I particularly regretted one super N-F exposure where we had observed a visible increase in garnet phenocryst size as we walked up the hill away from the thrust area.
A bonus was that we found we were able to park at the fault zone on the northern edge, and a second bonus was that the track from Rambla Hondo down to Polopos, along the route of the old mineral railway, had been surfaced. The mineral railway itself must have been the target of a conservation project over the winter: the route has been tidied up, fences erected on the more exposed stretches, and information boards added.

We wound up the day, which turned out the be quite a long one, with a visit to the Brèche Rouge at Playa del Algorróbico (twinned amphibole crystals in dacite - see right), the unaltered cores at the mirador where a wildlife bonus was a group of 5 ibex for whom we were obviously objects of curiosity as they stayed on top of the cutting for some time looking down at us (picture, left)

Finally we stopped to look at the Carboneras-Sopalmo fault zone which was looking good in the evening sun with the Tahel schist on the left, and multicoloured Alpujárride rocks in the centre with volcanic on the right. Unfortunately we had run out of time to visit it, though our recce had shown the road down was fine with a good surface on the steep section below the village.

Tallante revisited

Off up to Murcia airport by 8am – up that lovely coast road again as far as Águilas and then managed judiciously to avoid much of the AP7 and its tolls with Emily’s help. Emily is the Satnav voice btw.
Murcía is a lovely little airport – perhaps even smaller than Granada – which is great for meeting people as no chance of missing them, parking is very handy, and so are the hire cars. We camped in the cafetéria while we waited for people and though we had thought Stella would be last in fact we had to wait for David who was nearly 3 hours late – his flight had developed a problem mid-air and had to turn back and start again.
Tallante volcano lived up to its promise and despite early starts people were keen to have a look at this example of an alkali basalt cone which is rare in this area, at around 2.5 Ma much younger than the rest of the volcanics, and has some super mantle xenoliths (the rather orangy brown splodge on the lump of basalt!).

After a fun and games finding a supermarket... there was a power cut in Turre so they wouldn't let us in and eventually we took everyone down to Mercadona in Mojacar ... we had the usual fun and games sorting people into doubles, singles and twin rooms at the villa – Fran (English speaking) didn’t turn up so we had to manage with his pa-in-law Pedro (non-English speaking) but we finally got everyone sorted out into rooms and settled them down! Luckily the power came back on eventually though there were enough 'flickers' to get everyone looking for candles.

Time to get a hat

Garrucha market, with the aim of getting a sunhat, was the morning’s focus. Mission accomplished ... though not until we had walked the length of two of the long streets full of stalls selling fruit, veg, CDs, clothes (including those fluorescent orange, pink and lime green bras that seem so popular), handbags, belts etc.  ... we headed for an internet café. The first one was completely unstaffed and unoccupied and we eventually worked out it was an internet gaming place but we found another and worked our way through emails for an hour, then coffee on the sea front and back to lunch and a swim in the pool. We’d also found so good fruit and veg in the market including lovely young habas (broad beans) for €1/kg.
We’d hoped to be able to take our food and luggage over to the villa in Turre in the evening but Fran, the caretaker was working so we just checked out where it was and, when he hadn’t rung us by 9pm gave up.

Tapas and Tallante xenoliths

Second recce day – northward with Tallante volcano main objective. However we took Ivan’s advice and went along the coast road between the Sierra Almagrera and the Med and found umpteen lovely little coves plus some serious but untouched industrial archaeology left over from teh Sierra Almagrera silver mining era, and some villas in unspoilt cove settings which were to die for!
Back onto the main coast road (but studiously avoiding the new AP7 toll motorway, we drove down into the Cabo Cope Parque Natural through interesting towns, stopped by quiet, clean beaches in Calabardina for pulpo tapas and coffee, found beautiful yellow broomrape growing by the roadside and eventually found our way to Tallante.

I’m always amazed when somewhere is just where it was on Google Earth and on the geology map but there the scoria cone was, right down to the promised slurry tanks as a marker for the exposures! We walked up the track and scoured the hillside for the interesting bits. Around the lower slopes were micaceous schist and quartzite but as we got further up we found basalt scoria that had rolled down the hill and eventually in situ; it was all cemented into place with a CaCO3  caliche deposit. Over to the left (S) seemed more productive from the point of view of lherzolite xenoliths but on the right there were really big hornblende crystals – 2 cm across – as well as schist xenoliths of metre scale.

We decided to check out the Mazarrón mining area on the way back and easily found it complete with an interpretation board. Had an enjoyable wander up through but without finding any signs of the Ag-Pb-Zn mineralisation we expected/hoped for. Small signs of copper; perhaps iron, but that was it. Mega-scale industrial archaeology – old buildings, tailings dams, headgear, office buildings, tips etc. But that was all. The bee-eaters were good though!
Home again on the coast road and the promise of a day off tomorrow before the punters arrive on Saturday.

Majada Redonda reccy

OK – lie in – got up 8 am UK time and then headed off down the coast to check out various field locations. We drove down through Mojácar and over the Sierra Cabrera (getting more built up all the time on the north side) and stopped in Sopalmo to check out the track down into the rambla which looks fairly OK. Hopefully we’ll have a few sturdy males with us when we drive down there in case of sticky bits.

Then on through Carboneras and checked out the beach south of the Puerto where we found the way to drive into the southern end – very helpful – and checked out that the rocks hadn’t changed. On towards Agua Amarga where we stopped but the old mineral line from Lucaiñena out to the embarcadero and had a pleasant walk out to the headland looking at the industrial archaeology.

The road past the Los Trancos bentonite works is now asphalt all the way but the quarry doesn’t look as though it is working much. Then through past Los Escullos, a brief stop at the bentonite quarry at Morron de Mateo – now has a pond in the bottom and up the lane to Las Presillas where, after the second half of lunch we made our way down into the rambla and wandered along into the Majada Redonda caldera. I’m not totally convinced. The geology map shows it all as Cinto Ignimbrite and although there is some hydrothermal alteration I’d need more than that to come up with a caldera... a ring fracture perhaps?!
We plodded on and on – the path was fine gravel, a bit like walking on a beach! – and must have gone a couple of miles at least on this rather warm afternoon. Eventually decided to call it a day – still not totally convinced – and wandered back again, past the carobs, agaves, pretty wild flower etc to Las Presillas and back up the autopista and home.
More Masterchef – nice Druve won but we wanted them all to win!

Malaga to Villaricos

Slight travel time miscalculation resulted in getting up at 3am to drive to airport and having 2 hours for early morning caffeine injection instead of one. But we coped; flight called, onto bus, off bus onto aircraft and sat... and sat .... (and had about 40 mins zzz) then told that one of crew hadn’t turned up so another one on way.... then told that whilst we were sitting waiting they had found a bit of a fault with plane. It would get down to Malaga OK but captain not keen on coming back with the weather that was forecast so, we would hang on a bit then get on a bus and go to other plane being fired up, luggage transferred too, and then off we go. Plan A didn’t quite work though so we had to go back into terminal and hang around Gates 1 and 2 (always wondered where they were!) with the advantage there was a loo ... yesssss!... and then eventually get onto new plane and arrived in Malaga WITH luggage, only 2 hours late.
Thanks to slight overspend on car hire we had no queue to pick that up, and after a quick sort out, change walking boots for sandals etc and strip of several layers of fleece we set off east towards Almeria. They still haven’t finished the autopista all the way along the coast but there is more than there was. Once we got clear of Malaga we stopped and tucked into some lunch (well it was about 3pm by now!) but then headed on and got a good long way before a nostalgic cortado at the service area at Campohermoso near Nijar. Then onwards and upwards to find the supermercado in Mojacar and stock up on dinner and brekkers, ring Ivan to arrange to meet up and then to Villaricos, unpack car and veg out – but OMG we can’t go to bed – it is the final of Masterchef! So we stayed up till 11 for that and made up for it next morning.