rocks and olives

Valentia Island

2011-05-20T20:52:00.001+01:00

Our last day - Valentia Island

Last day - Tetrapods and myriapods

2011-05-01T20:22:00.001+01:00

The final day was all on Valentia Island, now with a handy bridge across from Portmagee. We started off at the old Valentia slate quarry at Dohilla where smooth slabs of astonishing size were produced in the past: used for billiard tables and shelving in particular. These are underground quarries but were closed in 1911 because of foreign competition - from Wales - though there has been some recent interest and we could see modern machinery down in the quarry. Part of the main quarry approach has been converted into a grotto with a statue of Our Lady and Bernadette highup on the cliff. Sadly we didn't know if they were lifesize or no, so no good for scale.
From here we went down to the Tetrapod trackway site, also at Dohilla. This is one of the earliest records in the world of primitive amphibian trackways and was discovered in 1992 by Iwan Stossel, a geology student from Zurich, and published in 1995. Dating of associated volcanic rocks places this at 385 Ma.
The footprints don't show any detail and are likely to be underprints but even so give a lot of information about the size and and movement of the animal. One shows body drag and another, tail drag. They've been deformed by tectonic stress but strain analysis shows the original body length was around 1m.
There's a good interpretation board and the access is easy from the designated car park via a pathway down to the top of the low cliff.
Lunch was in Knights Town - built in the 19th Century for the quarries and, as far as mine went at least, was another bowl of delicious chowder eaten on a roof terrace overlooking the harbour. After a diversion to see the Altazamuth Stone (and some debate about why it isn't Altazimuth) and a walk to the museum to get some booklets about the trackway (if shut ring the number on the door!) we went back round to Trawagwinnaun Bay on the way to Cromwell Lighthouse to check out a wide dolerite dyke, and then below the lighthouse to see the Valentia Slate Fm which has a number of trackways of Diplichnites - must have been about the size of a largish centipede!
As a finale we went over to the other end of the island to Telegraph Field where the transatlantic cables came ashore - a fascinating monument has cross sections of the actual cables embedded and the field is also the site of one of the last dancing platforms.... where comely maidens danced at the crossroad... Bettie and Jan obliged! Cups of tea and scones nearby completed a really super day
With an early start for the 250 mile drive back to Dublin in the morning some of us weren't planning on making a night of it but we still found time to go down to the pub for a last Guinness

Dingle to Portmagee

2011-04-30T20:28:00.000+01:00

Dingle to Portmagee, a set on Flickr.

South coast of Dingle, then Gap of Dunloe on the Iveragh Peninsula

Macgillicuddie's Reeks and Portmagee

2011-04-30T19:56:00.002+01:00

The second half of the trip is based at Portmagee on the north coast of the Iveragh Peninsula opposite Valentia Island so to get there, although it was only just over the water from Dingle, we had to go back up the Dingle 'finger' and down the Iveragh 'finger' with various diversions such as the Ring of Kerry and Kate Kearney's cottage on the way. We were planning to meet Ken's wife Bettie, who is also a geologist, and a colleague, Pat Meere who is a structural geologist, at KK's cottage at lunchtime so there was time for a potter along the coast during the morning.
A wander outside before breakfast showed preparations for a music festival in Dingle that weekend but we turned our backs on the fleshpots, packed up the cars and headed off to Kilmurry Bay where I'm afraid the boulder beach defeated me (and a few others) but most went on down to have a look at the coastal section at the eastern side where large scale, cross-stratified pinky-red aeolian sandstones are exposed in the cliffs. Ken is a brilliant leader though and had a road cut in his back pocket where we stopped to look at something similar: there were steep avalanche faces and, amazingly, Cruziana tracks where beasties had scuttled across the face of the dunes. Trevor the climber came into his own here and obligingly scuttled up the face of the cutting and hung on with his fingernails while we took photos with 'Trevor for scale'. Oh and as first spotter of a trace I got bought a Guinness that night by Ken!
Several road cuts with well planned laybys opposite allowed us to have a good look at the absolutely beautiful Inch conglomerate and the overlying Lough Slat conglomerate. The Inch conglomerate is the result of erosion of high grade metamorphic rocks and contains stunning mica schist clasts. The metamorphoic rocks were thrust upwards along the Dingle Bay lineament, forming a ridge which was eroded, producing extensive fanglomerates. The Lough Slat conglomerate is totally different with white vein quartz and red jasper pebbles and derived from the opposite direction and unconformable on the Loch Inch C.
On then, past Inch spit (always a windy place to bathe apparently but good for surfing) to the Iveragh Peninsula and soon we saw an awesome cleft in the hills ahead of us - this is the Gap of Dunloe which we were going to explore. We met up with Bettie and Pat, had the local version of chowder in KK's C and then headed on up the valley. The road is 'recommended' not for cars as the local attraction is pony and trap drives up and back but there still seemed to be a lot of cars which we rather objected to as we were on shanks pony. The exception was a wedding group who were in high spirits - we felt they deserved a good place for their photos!
It is a very long road..... and rather hard under foot.... and I think the best bits were near the start really where we saw good faulting and thrusting and signs of stress in these northward thrust rocks. The Gap cuts neatly through, perpendicular to the direction of thrusting and is a good cross section route. Lovely lakes with water lilies coming into leaf and the grass was speckled with butterwort in flower,
On then to Portmagee. We needed to get a bottle of whisky to give to Ken that evening and had, stupidly, forgotten it at the supermarket stop earlier so had to drop out and search the small shops along the way. Unfortunately Tony, who was on his motorbike, stopped too to get fuel and we went on without him! Then it bagan to rain - only rain of the trip... and we had a plaintive phone call from Tony. Well we set him on his way, and went on to the hostel to get the others settled in (they had more or less done it) and then went back to meet our lost sheep who by this time had headed on over the bridge onto the island.. NO Tony! We got him back and thought he was following us but it was mere coincidence so there was a sort of Keystone Kops chase up and down Portmagee High Street before we finally got him!
Nice after that to have a proper sit down restaurant meal to look forward to - bit hard on the pocket mind, but very much enjoyed the taster plate of local sausages as well as our main course.
Tomorrow - the tetrapod tracks!

Dingle day 2

2011-04-29T18:58:00.000+01:00

Dingle day 2, a set on Flickr.

Bealacoon, Slea Head, Dunquin and Wine Strand

Dingle day 2 - rocks and royalty

2011-04-29T18:34:00.001+01:00

Main concern today was who wanted to see THE WEDDING (William and Kate) and if so how would we fit it in?
Ken came up with a masterplan which worked well though. We did a morning location at Bealacoon Cove in Minard Bay, east of Dingle and then came back for a late coffee at Paudie's Bar in the Dingle Ba hotel and timed it to a nicety to catch the vows, the vestry and the departure from Westminster Abbey.
Back to Bealacoon - sadly one car load didn't make it as the convoy system broke down. We realised it when we got there and while we went down to the beach with instructions from Ken to look at the melange and the fault, he went back and scouted around various places in the hopes of finding the missing car. By the time he got back, sadly without them, we'd 'done' those locations and he took us over to the north side of the cove to look at the ribbon striped rocks - stunning reds and oranges with ducky little folds in them. Then back to the melange to make sure we had seen the best bits and ID'd the fault correctly, before going up to the back of the beach where there are Holocene beach and peat deposits - I was thrilled to find recognisable silver birch bark in large chunks!
Back in Dingle we met up with the others - I think they and Ken had been chasing each other around the lanes! - watched the wedding, drank our coffee (though sadly they had run out of the scones Ken had promised) and then headed off to Slea Head around midday.
Here I got bitten by the most westerly horse fly in Europe - ouch!
Anyway that done we were a) stunned by the views and b) fascinated by the 3D exposure of the beaconites burrows and some pictures of the beastie that probably made them.
On then to another seafood chowder venue before going off to Dunquin Harbour. First stop was down one of the old zigzags to a ledge with a view of the cliffs and then we headed down what I think is one of the most amazing cliff roads I've ever seen which is an amazing bit of engineering down the spur of cliff sheltering the harbour itself. This was where boats from the Blasket Islands came in, and the ferry still goes from here. Some interesting closeups - mud cracks and a mud conglomerate before heading back up which was one of the few occasions when I've found the up easier than the down!
Last stop of the day was Wine Strand where we walked round the cliffs to a little bay with exposures of fluvial fining up cycles and a smashing dyke - the most southerly dolerite dyke in Ireland - which had some lovely amygdales full of zeolite.
Back to Dingle and meal 3 at the Marina Inn where we are steadily working our way through the menu. Tomorrow - south Dingle and round to the Gap of Dunloe to meet up with Ken's wife Bettie and a colleague, Pat Meere who is a structural geologist

Dingle day 1

2011-04-28T21:20:00.001+01:00

Dingle day 1, a set on Flickr.

Around Clogher Head and Drom Point

First day in Dingle - starting at the bottom and working up

2011-04-28T20:24:00.000+01:00

We started off on Clogher Head in glorious sunshine and Ken gave us an overview of the surrounding area that we were going to be exploring today. (See the link to my Flickr photostream for photos by the way)
The entire area is large scale, north verging parallel folds of Silurian and Lower Devonian age - apart from one bed of rock which is Devonian conglomerate unconformable on the rest. From Clogher Head we headed on down to Ferriter's Cove where we had an opportunity to look at a parasequence of offshore to tidal flat rocks from the lower part of the Silurian Dunquin Gp. ... livened up by some volcanics - welded ignimbrite with fiamme and, I think, some reworked unwelded ignimbrite.
There is a series of 5 of these parasequences, possibly representing cycles of rising and falling sea level caused by inflation of a magma chamber followed by eruption.
Lunch at the Blasket Centre (one of a number of bowls of seafood chowder I had over the next few days) was followed by a walk along the cliffs to visit a series of locations towards Drom Point: red beds - sandstones, calcretised siltstones and red/grey mottled mudstones deposited on a semi-arid alluvial plain and enlivened by beds of airfall tuff. Some ferricretes, mottled red and grey/green, evidence repeated wetting and drying cycles of playa lakes as the ground water level rose and fell.
Finally, Drom Point gave us an opportunity to see some swaley cross stratification, and some beds full of Chondrites trace fossils.
Back at the B&B in Dingle we had a debrief from Ken before heading out for some more pricey nosh and Guinness

Dublin to Dingle

2011-04-27T21:31:00.001+01:00

Jan and I met Gill at Bristol Airport rather early on Wednesday morning to catch the 0815 Aer Arann flight to Dublin - a bit of forethought had identified the meeting point as Starbucks so we could have some reviving caffeine to get us going. Dear little twin turbo-prop high wing aeroplane and only 24 passengers so loads of room but sadly rather hazy so not much in the way of views on the hour's flight.
We met up with Mary and Ann by the car hire desk and things started well with an upgrade to a 7-seater which we thought would be better for 5 of us on the long drive to the south-west. But, when we got ourselves and our bags onto the shuttle bus to the pick up point as instructed, the driver got all concerned and decided we should be picking up in the short term parking and went to check - good thing he did as he was right! Apologies to other passengers who had been kept waiting and we trekked about half a mile to the far end of the car park to find out big wine coloured monster. 4 of us packed the bags in the back while Jan concentrated on finding how the seat adjustment worked so she could see over the steering wheel.
By now it was around 10am and we headed off round the M50 and then down the motorway towards Limerick, which went on quite a bit further than our 10 year old road atlas indicated and even quite a bit further than the satnav thought it would (lots of 'recalculating' and 'please drive to highlighted route' as we apparently headed across uncharted and roadless tracts of countryside until I switched the sound off). Absolutely NO service areas though - not even laybys! We deduced a policy of not taking custom away from local hotels etc and accordingly, around midday, headed off at a junction and found a nice little restaurant in Birdhill where we enjoyed a good coffee outside in the sunshine ... yes, I know it is Ireland, but we sat out in the sunshine! In April!
We then ate our sarnies in the car (mean things that we are!) before finding our way back to the N7 which bore every resemblance to a very shiny new motorway and got quite a bit past Limerick before it finally turned itself into an ordinary main road.
Decisions.... which way to Dingle? A bit of consideration of potential field locations suggested that we weren't too likely to be doing much on the northern side of the peninsula, so we headed that way - there was a green line along the road too which was encouraging. Means it is lined with leprechauns or something I think. Nice drive though we didn't see any of the little chaps, and then we headed on up to the Connor Pass where we not only got more pretty views, and bumped into two more of the party - Janet and Trevor, but persuaded ourselves that an ice cream was essential for our well-being. Then down on into Dingle and Marina Lodge to meet up with the rest. Ken, our leader, turned up around 7pm and gave us an intro to what we would be doing and we fixed a very civilised start time of 0930 in the morning (couldn't get breakfast earlier than 0830).
A reccy of pubs and restaurants revealed that the Dingle restauranteurs are doing their best to save Ireland's economy by making sure that visitors spend lots of money there but eventually we found somewhere not too pricey and dined well - I had a great plate of mussels, washed down with Guinness.
Tomorrow - off to west Dingle

Dingle Day 0

2011-04-27T21:13:00.000+01:00

Dingle Day 0, a set on Flickr.

At the top of the Connor Pass

Last day + 1: Guimar pyramids

2011-04-06T19:17:00.003+01:00

Jan and I like to see people off and check the hotel bill etc, and then spend a day checking up on places for future trips. This time we decided to check out the pyramids at Guimar and, just for fun, drove there along the old main road through Granadilla, Arico, Fasnia and so on. We drove along parts of this road quite a few times in the early years of doing this trip so things got quite nostalgic: towards the northern end there are good sections through the dorsal ridge basalts, and a superb view of the Guimar valley from the Mirador de Don Martin which sits right on the southern landslip scarp.


Guimar valley from the Don Martin mirador. Landslip scarp on left and back wall in distance

The pyramids are not straightforward to find - I was glad we had the satnav with us but once there there was ample parking and a very well laid out reception area, botanic gardens, exhibition area and, of course, the pyramids themselves.
Thor Heyerdal was very keen to promote a link between these and pyramids in the Middle East and in Central America but this is rather spoilt by discovery of 19th C pottery under one which was excavated. I've talked to an archaeologist friend of mine, David Jones, about them and he, like me, is supportive of the idea that there is a sort of 'convergent evolution' in pyramid, or ceremonial platform, building since this is the simplest way to create a raised area without using any sort of ladders or scaffolding. No need for the technique to be spread from one place to another. Sorry Thor.

Pyramids at Guimar. The recess at the bottom of this image is a cave below a lava flow which was lived in by Guanche between 680 - 1020 AD (C-14 dates).

I got the impression that although not many of these structures exist here now, they may have been more plentiful in the recent past and I wondered whether the name of the village where we stay (La Escalona) is a reference to something similar? 'Escalo' means 'climb', 'escalera' is 'steps. However it seems very odd that there's no reference to these in 19th C literature. One suggestion is that they are heaps of stone from field clearance and I do rather wonder how much of their present regular shape is owed to the Spanish gift for detailed restoration of their ancient monuments - often hard to tell the old from the new!

An unexpected bonus here was the boulders of Dorsal Ridge basalts used to line the paths and build the walls in the garden: more pyroxene megacrysts!

Last day - Montana Pelada, the southern rift and Skinny Andrew's tile kiln

2011-04-04T21:28:00.002+01:00

Heading across Montana Pelada crater

The walk to Montana Pelada can be warm so we planned it for first thing in the morning. With the aid of a map small groups checked out the field relationships between the original material of the tuff ring and the later ignimbrites and palaeosoils that fill its centre. Next on the list was lunch in Los Abrigos which has good fish restaurants (though sadly the sun went in at this stage) and then we headed uphill the short way (i,e, no hairpins) looking at some building stone use of basalt and various ignimbrites on the way and stopping at a restored tile kiln - Andres Delgado's kiln - which in contrast to the field walls is built with low density ignimbrite at the base and heavier basalt higher up.
Final stop was at the Centinela mirador which offers a really good view across the southern rift arm - more diffuse, and not a topographical feature like the NE and NW ridges but instead marked out by various sets of aligned scoria cones
An offering by Vince of a 'student's write up of the trip' and a massive paella for 15 finished the day off really well. Next year Fuerteventura and Lanzarote!

Day 5 Top of Teide

2011-04-03T20:56:00.003+01:00

The last 'alpine start' of the trip got us to the head of the teleferico queues - except there weren't any today! 15 of us and slightly more of a group of American astronomers who had been up 'observing' all night at Izana were crowded into a gondola licensed for 25 but we got to the top OK... were the swings over the pylons more pronounced than usual?
After a bit of orientation at the top we headed down the Pico Viejo path as the other was closed because of ice and despite the altitude most of the group who went made it down to the mirador and back within the hour. On the way the fumaroles could be smelled and also seen as the water vapour condensed in the cold morning air (-3 deg).


Penitentes - snow spikes - by the Pico Viejo path

Back down at the bottom we introduced people to lumumba - hot chocolate with brandy and cream. Fairly yummy! Then we headed off towards the NE ridge which was the focus of the remainder of the day's geology. First stop was lunch and a look round the visitor centre near El Portillo then, as the cloud blew in we had our first taste of weather that wasn't unbroken sunshine as we looked at the 1704/5 eruptions near the observatory, then the striking black and white layers of La Tarta where plinian fall is interbedded with mafic scoria. We stopped at La Crucita to check out the Dorsal Ridge basalt there which is stuffed full of big plagioclases and then at the Mirador where it also includes weathered olivines and pyroxenes, and finally the beautifully spheroidally weathered basalt in the cutting just before the Guimar turning. Down the Guimar landslip valley we found a new mirado where the wall was built of fresh basalt with whopping big olivine phenocrysts - so we had seen at least 4 different basalts as we came along the ridge.
Oh yes and a coffee stop where the lads found some totally gross chocolate coated donuts!
Last day tomorrow, and a return to the Bandas del Sur and our answer to the 'mystery quarry' of SXR260 fame

Day 4 - Roques de Garcia

2011-04-02T20:42:00.002+01:00

After two early starts on the trot I thought the troops deserved a slightly more leisurely morning so we reverted to 9am and had time to enjoy a proper breakfast with all the trimmings.
We went straight to the Parador and parked there , used the loos etc and headed over to the Roques de Garcia, a ridge of rocks that marks a change in level of the caldera floor. A beautifully sunny day again and plenty of time to stroll along the path looking at all the features to be seen here, including the beautiful pahoehoe flow with big platy plagioclase phenocrysts which flowed through a gap at the top end. After lunch (where the lizards were so feisty they nearly became a pest) some of us went on down to the lower caldera and round the base of the rocks while the rest retraced our steps, meeting up again at the cafeteria.

Top end of the Roques de Garcia

A visit to the Azulejos to examine the blue-green hydrothermal alteration, and then a stop at Boca de Tauce to check out different dyke orientations completed day 4 and we headed back down the hill to beer and a bathe with an early start on the cards for the next day

Day 3 - Cueva del Viento, barraquitos, Orotava valley and back through the caldera

2011-04-01T20:20:00.002+01:00

Another early start! I was really stressing abut this one because I'd fixed to arrive at the Visitor Centre at 9.30 am and it's a long drive... they are obviously all keen and eager though as they were all there at 0745 ready to go! We made it just about on the dot (and the previous day's driving practice came in handy as we drove up through the narrow streets of the village, missed the turning by the roadworks, did a 3-point turn and came back down again (Jan said the car park was easier to approach from that angle and she'd done it on purpose... nice one Jan!)
This was a most excellently run centre! Our guide gave us an intorductory talk with video etc that was really informative, before taking us in 2 minibuses further on up the hill where we walked up the side of a flow levee and then down onto the pahoehoe surface west of it which hides the lava tube 'Cueva del Viento'. Lots of informative chat about village life and agriculture in the area - did you know for example that the little fields between the levees have had soil brought in from elsewhere to create them? Endemic plants were pointed out to us as we walked through the pine trees to the cave entrance. There, all kitted up with caving lamps etc we went down the steps into the tube which really is quite exceptional. Although only a short section is open this is the longest tube in Europe and has multiple levels where one flow has built up over another and then emptied out leaving them hollow.


Terraces in the lava tube show succesively lower lava levels as the effusion rate abated

To round off the morning our guide introduced us to barraquitos which are a tasty coffee based drink with condensed milk, ordinary milk, a shot of liqueur a slice of lemon peel and a shake of cinnamon. Extremely good value for €1
Next on the itinerary was the Orotava Valley and, after a few false casts when the two-way radios came into their own, we managed to get back into convoy and headed up the hill with a stop at the Piedra Margarita (a cross section of an undrained lava tube with radiating joint pattern) and then into the caldera at El Portillo where we had a tea break before a final stop to see the contrasting red and green pumice from the 2000 years BP eruption of Montana Blanca and the stunning blocky vitric phonolite flow it rests on.

Masca (Teno massif) then back up the NW ridge

2011-03-31T19:29:00.002+01:00

The early start worked well - our lovely hotel let us have breakfast almost an hour early, at 0715, and everyone was raring to go by 8am. This early start is well worth it as we parked right on the exposure in Masca car park which is as impressive as ever - those lovely big augite crystals in the thin ankaramite pahoehoe flows. A bonus: the loos at the first cafe on the left are much improved! Now indoors for starters! And the fresh squeezed lemon is as good as ever.
On then over the hill and down to El Palmar for the first NW ridge stop where scoria cones have punched a hole in the valley bottom. The quarries still show the different oxidation states really well though the light isn't marvellous at this time in the morning. On then to Garachico and straight up the hairpins to the mirador where it was gratifying to hear 14 'Wow's in quick succession as people saw the view down over the town on its lava delta. I had a particular reason for coming here this year as I wanted to get an olive wood bowl for my niece for an engagement present - due at their fiancailles near Geneva 2 days after getting home from this trip.

Chirche mirador

Then we headed SE along the NW ridge - i.e. towards the caldera, back over the Boca de Cangrejo flow from the ridge that we'd passed over earlier and down to Guia de Isora first though to get stuff for our picnic lunch, then hmmm OK I should know better than to take short cuts but it looked like a good time saver! We went straight up the hill through Chirche and it was only because of some pretty good driving skills that we actually made it - steep, narrow, winding through the village and real crunch time comes when you meet something! We made it though (thanks drivers!) and were rewarded by finding a lovely mirador where we ate our lunch.
Then onward and upward, a wave to Chinyero - the baby volcano here which erupted in 1909 - and to the Narices del Teide mirador (Chahorra 1798) before ferrying the group to the forestry path that heads over to the caldera wall for a nice leg stretch. This is a super intro to a lava flow close up - beautiful fresh a'a and then a treat at the caldera wall end where it rests on a slightly earlier pahoehoe flow ponded against the caldera wall.
Back down the hill to Vilaflor and on down to La Escalona for a welcome swim and jacuzzi (or beer!)

Tenerife 2011 Day 1 - Bandas del Sur

2011-03-30T17:16:00.004+01:00

We'd picked the group up from the airport the day before so decided to start them off gently with a little run around the southern slopes of the Canadas volcano.
Photos
Our trusty, reliable, first stop (Granadilla ignimbrite at Los Blanquitos) has, sadly, been built on - 2 years ago we found it a building site but Alejandro wheedled our way in; now there is a high wall and solid gates across. This is a great shame as it very clearly showed a fall deposit of angular pumice clasts topped off with a flow of ash, pumice and lithics with fine cross stratified ash at the base. The scouts had been out though and we had two alternatives: one that Alejandro had found for us, and one we had reccied last year. Both good sites, with parking, but the second fitted into the itinerary a tad better this time round and we were pleased with it. Probably try Ale's next time round though. The stop was actually better than the old one as it extended the length of a road cutting, both sides of the road, and included a good channel eroded in the fall deposit by the later flow.

Granadilla Formation

We went on from here to a stop where the old main road crosses the Barranco del Azucar south of Arico: here the Arico ignimbrite is handily exposed on the abandoned section of road where it crosses the ravine. This is a spectacular rock with a welded mid section and massive vertical jointing. There are obsidian and pumice fiamme and with a bit of searching Eileen was the first to find a vivid blue crystal of nosean - a feldspathoid that indicated this is an alkaline igneous rock.
On down the old road from Arico Viejo towards Poris we walked down a side lane past an exposure of the Wavy Bed and ate our lunch while thought about it, then walked back up and got it sorted! There are some enormous solar arrays down this road now - making the most of the sunshine in this sunny corner of the island. Just where the road goes under the autopista is a quarry where the La Caleta ignimbrite is exposed, and a nice band of accretionary lapilli conveniently accessible so we stopped for a quick look at that before going on through Poris and back up the hill a mile or so towards Arico Viejo where there is a really large quarry with excellent sections through a number of different ignimbrites and palaeosoils and a lava flow at the base (and, guess what, that ubuquitous Wavy Bed part way up the side!). This year I tried it as a 'matching exercise' with photos of the exposures on the ramp and in the quarry itself, labelled up with the relevant formations and this works really well: better than trying to sort it out from scratch. We began going here 5-6 years ago now after the car parking area at the quarry by Tajao PIRS was barred off.
Back down through Poris again and onto the autopista for a last stop at La Caleta just south of S Miguel de Tajao where there are soem very photogenic cliffs of pale buff ignimbrite topped off with a much more lithic rich ignimbrite which has sagged down into the underlying bed in metre scale load structures. There's a good exposure by the steps to the beach where you can identify the different lithic clasts and then the fun of finding your very own piece of syenite on the beach itself. Some guys tried to persuade us that the next beach was better but we reckoned it was just because they wanted that one to themselves!
Tomorrow an early start to get parked in Masca before the tourists arrive

Stylolites and sandstone statues

2011-01-29T19:59:00.002Z

Saturday 29th Jan was the local OUGS branch AGM at the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff
I've always had a special interest in this building and the others in the complex - City Hall etc - as my Grandad worked on them. He was a stonemason who did the fancy sculpture bits on buildings and I'd love to know which bits he did! It is built of Portland stone and opened in 1906.
One of my favourite bits here though is the limestone paving inside which displays beautiful stylolites:

Stylolites in limestone floor slabs at the NMW in Cardiff

These form by pressure solution between beds of limestone.

In between times we had our AGM, saw some good pics of where we had been in the last 12 months, and elected a new Newsletter Editor - unanimous - there was only 1 candidate!

Janet kicks off the AGM with her powerpoint of the year's trips

Lunch at the Wig and Pen and then back for Prof Brian Williams talk on oil reservoirs in the river gravels deposited off shore as Pangaea split open.


Brian Williams

The importance of these reservoirs is that they are very extensive - the mid-Pangaea split was very long - and they are mainly low sinuosity braided rivers so that the pods of gravel are not only good porosity and permeability but they are well linked up.
While we were there I took the opportunity to look at the new exhibition of Chinese carvings - first time out of China, this exhibition only opened 3 days earlier - and they are stunning - very fresh despite their age (9th to 13th C). They come from the World Heritage site at Dazu in SW China. Some of them give lovely insights into daily life - the one that took my fancy was a row of musicians on a balcony - see it at this link - but there are other lovely ones too. The carvings are only being shown here, then go back to China. They originate from a horseshoe shaped vertical cliff that has been carved into thousands of statues. The only reason they are able to send some to be displayed is that a few have toppled/become detached over the centuries. Most are still in place!

Sierra de Elvira

2010-12-17T18:42:00.001Z

There is a row of crags north of the autopista on our side of Granada and I had a good opportunity to photograph them on a trip into Aki to buy a cupboard. The hills are topped off by a massive dolomite bed of Lower Jurassic (Sinemurian) age. This bed of rock dips north but is cut off on its southern side by a NW-SE trending fault - part of the Alicante - Cadiz fault zone which runs through the Granada basin.

Threlkeld Mining Museum

2010-11-20T19:08:00.009Z

Saturday morning on the OUGS winter weekend at Shap Wells and a group of us headed off for the mining museum at Threlkeld. I was really looking forward to this as last time I'd been to Threlkeld Quarry, near Keswick, was soon after the quarry had closed down in the very early 1990s.
That occasion was one of Mike Henty's 'Geoliday's' - we stayed in self catering cottages on the edge of Keswick, Mike and Linda did the cooking - amazing barbecue cookery - every night and Dave Williams and Dee Edwards were there to help us with the geology. The aim of the week was to check out Threlkeld quarry so that the group hoping to set up the mining museum had some pointers to some of the interesting geology there but we also managed a good look around locally, partly under Eric Skipsey's guidance, including the Borrowdale volcanics.
The stunning Skiddaw slate xenoliths in teh Threlkeld microgranite, and the beautiful example of a granite/country rock contact we found on that occasion are still the 5 star geology exhibits on a tour around the quarry but there is masses of other stuff to see there too: excellent displays of local geology, much in the way of quarrying and mining machinery, a narrow gauge steam railway to take visitors around the site, and an underground tour of an old silver, lead, zinc and copper mine that was here.
Our guides were very knowledgeable and their enthusiasm was impressive! A smashing morning.

Last day on the F-island

2010-11-09T17:33:00.002Z

On the final day we decided to head for a corner of the island we'd yet to explore - the SE, between Caleta de Fuste and Gran Tarajal. This is an area of cuchilletes - remnants of the central shield volcano - and scoria cones and flows. It is also the closest point to the African mainland so we headed first for the lighthouse on the south-east tip. This stands on top of a cuchillete - one of the few places where a road goes to the top of one of these knife edge ridges and as we drove up the single track road we began to see why: it would around the hillside spurs with a steep slope below. Occasionally on the most dramatic points there was a token crash barrier but for the most part nothing between us and the drop and we were glad not to have to pass anything in one of the passing places!


Looking back at the lighthouse, and towards Gran Tarajal, from the headland

The road back down - we were glad not to meet anything!

From here we went on to Gran Tarajal which has a lovely beach and uses a very pretty stone for some of the buildings

Gran Tarajal

Leisegang rings in stone

Finally, as the icing on the cake we had a great view of a Fuerteventuran Chat while we ate our picnic!

More reccying south of Ajui

2010-11-08T17:55:00.004Z

With just Jan, Gill and me left, after some serious work with Google Earth images, maps and GPS we decided to have a go at finding the carbonatite exposures south of Ajui and the migmatite in the Barranco de Aulaga so that we'd be better prepared for future trips. First off, the carbonatite: we followed a rather circuitous path around and through some new villas that seem to have been abandoned in mid-build and made our way out to the headland. There seemed to be some 4WDs probably belonging to fishermen, so we aimed for those hoping that there would be a way down to the shore platform below the cliffs. There was, but only for the more agile and longer legged (specially the bit where the directions say to 'cross a 2 metre wide tidal gully'... ! We three elderly ladies decided to view from afar but at least I can take people there so they can have a look if they want.

Punta de Nao, south of Ajui.

The carbonatite could well be some of the lighter bits here!

Giving that up as a bad job, we trekked back over the ridge into the Barranco de Aulaga to see if we could find some more tumbleweed to attack Gill, and perhaps some carbonatite further inland. On the way we happened to spot something I'd seen before and think were bee nests in the caliche coating over the hillside. They look rather like the bowls of old fashioned clay pipes. If anyone knows do say! (Later... Jesus, on the Iberianature forum , says that they are wild bees - and to keep away in spring and summer! ... and later still ... that they are Family Halictidae, genus Halictus or Lasioglossum)


Burrows or nests in caliche

Geology in the making in the Barranco de Aulaga - mud cracks and rain drop marks


Epidote crystals on a basalt joint face

So - plenty else to look at but we still hadn't found the carbonatite (later checks with grid refs and Google Earth show that it is quite a way up the hillside so we were in the wrong place)
However we did find something we'd been looking for all week - a close up view of pillow lava in the submarine volcanics!


Good shape, chilled margin all around - has to be!

Tomorrow - last day - the closest point to Africa!

The Majo sacred mountain and the north coast

2010-11-07T19:41:00.001Z

Montana Tindaya

The pale coloured peak of Tindaya, near La Oliva, was a sacred mountain of the indigenous Majo people. Even today a permit is required to access the summit area. The rock itself is much more felsic than most, hence the paler colour.

Pliocene sea floor

Tindaya's lower slopes are blanketed by Pliocene marine sediments deposited during a period of higher sea level. There is good evidence in the numerous sea shells.

On the coast to the west, near an abandoned urbanisation, are some superb exposures of the seamount series rocks, unconformably overlain by subaerial volcanics and some marine sediments

Lobos from the road west of Coralejo

A graded track runs along the north coast - a little bumpy but perfectly drivable - and it has great views north towards Isla de Lobos and Lanzarote. In between the a'a flows from the chain of scoria cones to the south there are beautiful little sandy coves

Peridotite xenolith in basalt

North of Coralejo harbour some rock armour contains beautiful mantle xenoliths, such as this one made up mainly of fresh and weathered olivine and plagioclase feldspar

Cats getting warmed up on some cosy basalt!

South of Caleta de Fuste

2010-11-06T19:54:00.003Z

We'd heard that the 'Salt Museum' was worth a visit so headed for it this morning. It is part of the chain of state run museums on the F-island - some are free and some charge a basic €5.

Las Salinas de Carmen, Caleta de Fuste

The Salt Museum has an exhibition hall explaining the history of salt production and the salinas here; once we were genned up on that we followed the trail out around the foam collection tanks, heating tanks and evaporation ponds before picnicking in one of the shady shelters with stripy Barbary Squirrels for company.


Barbary ground squirrel : Arrdilla moruna : Atlantoxerus getulus. This was introduced to the F-island from the mainland in 1965 and has settled in well!

After lunch we headed to another of the museums, the Poblado de la Atalyita. This is a majo village which was inhabited by the indigenous people of the island before the conquest and lies on the southern edge of one of the a'a flows that run down to the coast here. The flow ran past a small conical hill known as La Atalayita 'the little watchtower', hence the name of the village. The houses themselves are dry stone huts built of rough blocks of a'a lava.

Looking south across the a'a flow (the Malpais Pequeno). La Atalayita is the low conical hill on the left. The village lies to the right of this, on the far side of the flow


A ruined stone hut built of blocks of lava. Jan for scale.

To wind up the day we went on down to the coast at Pozo Negro where we found a lovely restaurant right at the back of the beach and enjoyed sitting there for some time watching fishing boars being launched.

Fishing boats are launched straight off the beach at Pozo Negro. The nets (there are two here) are taken about a mile offshore

To wind up a good, varied day, as we drove back along the side of the Malpais Grande we saw a dozen or more Egyptian Vultures circling above the cuchillete on the northern side of the valley. Sadly too far off to photograph :(

Alcogida Eco-Museum and exploring Puertito de los Molinos

2010-11-05T19:53:00.001Z

We'd checked up on the Eco-Museum a couple of days earlier and all of us fancied a look around it so all 6 of us headed off therein time for 10 am opening. It was well worth a visit with tradition houses restored - from very basic ones to the main farmhouse in the village; added to that there were plenty of displays of crafts - embroidery, stone carving, weaving, basket making, bread making (we sampled that and it was very good!).
A few geological highlights:

Building stone: light coloured Pliocene sedimentary rock (the odd bit of lava seems to have crept in) with quoins of red cemented scoria from nearby Mta Bermeja.

Lumps of scoria are hammered into the bottom of wooden boards to make a threshing sledge.

The stone mason carving a mortar: he had a three sided shelter so that he could always keep out of the sun... neat!


Pestles and Mortars carved out of volcanic rock

After calling in at the Visitor Centre to buy some fresh baked bread we went on down to Puertito de los Molinos where we'd heard there was a good fish restaurant at the back of the beach and we weren't disappointed. We were then thrilled to see some lovely exposures of volcanic lavas cut by at least 2, possibly 3, sets of dykes.

The headland north of Puertito de los Molinos. Volcanics cut by dykes at the base are eroded off forming a level platform on which have been deposited coastal/marine sediments (light coloured) and younger lava flows

A dyke with a badly eroded centre; the dark, chilled margins have fared rather better.

A mini-dyke - but it had such a clear chilled margin I had to include it!

Cross-cutting dykes in the barranco leading east from the coast

Back to Ajui

2010-11-04T20:12:00.005Z

Numbers halved after the departure of 6 of the group for the UK we decided to pay a return visit to Ajui to have a look for the migmatite in the contact metamorphic aureole of the pyroxenite intrusion. Sources described this as visible in the Barranco de Aulagar to the south of the village
We parked at the top of the village (saved going back up the hill again) and headed for the barranco which didn't look as though it had seen any water for some time though obviously there had been much more regular flow down it in the distant past. The route took us up the western side of an earth dam (which held back no more than a dampish infill of mud where some greenery was growing.
A couple of hundred metres further on we began to find the migmatite: this is formed when the heat is so great that the rocks, instead of being metamorphosed, begin to melt. First thing that happens is that some of the lower temperature minerals are sweated out of the groundmass, coalesce in any areas where there is space (in this case probably cracks created by shear parallel to the dykes) and then recrystallise as things begin to cool down.

Barranco de Aulaga looking upstream (S)

Migmatite

The pale, felsic minerals show as light streaks in the darker groundmass.
Aulaga is the Spanish name for various thorny plants, in this case Thorn Lettuce (which I've also known as 'chicken wire bush' because of the 120 degree angles of the thorny stalks). Rounded masses of this were blowing down the barranco in the wind - the original tumbleweed perhaps? - and one of the group wearing shorts got badly scratched when one made a beeline for her!
After some first aid, followed by a fish lunch at one of the beach restaurants we decided to go and have a second look at the southern end of the Barranco de las Penitas which we'd been to a few days before: Jan reckoned that we could actually drive the track to the far end, saving a hot walk, so that we could get close to the syenite outcrop at the southern end of the ring complex. She was right.

Malpaso - the southern end of the barranco de las Penitas

We were able to walk along a pleasant path and through a palmera (sadly a number of trees are dying but there is a project to restore them) to the southern end of the syenite ridge a short way below the hermitage. A good reccy for next time!

And then there were 6...

2010-11-03T20:08:00.003Z

With the departure of the 1-weekers that just left Ann, Sally, Greg, Gill, Jan and myself.

Jan, Sally, Gill and I decided to catch the ferry from Corralejo over to the Isla de Lobos for the day

Several boats go back and forth, some with 'glass bottoms' though when we looked you couldn't see anything very exciting!

Lobos has one large scoria cone volcano, plus lava flows

El Puertito is a small fishing hamlet which boasts a restaurant - order your meal on arrival and they will tell you what time it will be ready to come back and eat! We had parrot fish

El Puertito

A'a flow from the scoria cone is puntuated by hornitos - bulges where gases expanded beneath the crust of the flow


While Jan and Gill went off for a walk to explore the island, Sally and I relaxed in this sheltered cove and enjoyed a swim

A fun day out at the end of a busy week!

Last day for the 1-weekers: Pajara to Punta de Guadalupe

2010-11-02T18:35:00.004Z

Slight problem with today - I needed to make space on the SD card and stupidly deleted the images before I'd saved them to my laptop. duh. Still, its a good excuse to go back ;)
We headed west to Pajara, stopping for coffee and a bit of tourism in the town. The church is lovely, with 'Aztec-style' carvings around the doorway and the noria (water wheel) just opposite was being demonstrated by an elderly Majorero (Fuerteventuran) and his burro.
From here we headed south and had a splendid view of Mta Hendida where subaerial basalt and trachybasalt lavas sit unconformably above an erosional surface in the basal complex seamount series. The older shield stage lavas are completely absent so 3 Ma worth of rock has gone, perhaps by flank collapse.
A winding road led up to a mirador on the col between Hendida and Sisacumbre with some exceptional views and at least 3 options for a stunning lunch location. Just down the hill from here we stopped at a T-junction to examine an exposure of dykes cutting green, altered basalts of the seamount series... still playing 'spot the pillows' though they hyaloclastites are fairly convincing!
Finally we headed down to La Pared and through the urbanizacion to the Punta de Guadalupe where, after a coffee stop, we went down onto the beach to look at the weathered breccias from subaerial cones that make up the shore platform. These are thought to represent the transitional stage from seamount formation to the point where the volcano broke surface and became an island. Shiny brown palagonitised surfaces were also much in evidence here.

A fantastic location to end the week on... though I'd saved some goodies for the 5 who were staying on for another few days.

Day 5 The Jandia Peninsula

2010-11-01T19:24:00.005Z

Our guide book - Carracedo and Day's "Canarian Volcanoes" - warned that this could be a long day but it was not such a long drive as we had been led to expect: perhaps the roads have been improved in the last 10 years?
We headed south past Gran Tarajal and Tarajalejo onto the Jandia isthmus where we made our first stop to look at the carbonate sands that cover this area and compare them with those we'd seen at Corralejo which have a similar origin. Looking for somewhere to pull off the road our lead car was perhaps a little hasty - we hit a patch of soft sand and had to be pushed back onto something a tad firmer before we continued! In the excitement I forgot to take any pix :(
We went on to the next recommended stop in Valle de los Canarios: the access is a little convoluted since it involves going past the valley mouth, off the dual carriageway, round a couple of roundabouts, back the way you came and under the main road. By this time we were ready for a coffee and stopped at a filling station. There was a good exposure of the shield basalt lava beside the cafe which was rather fortunate since when we came to drive up the valley we found that the road was barred with a locked gate and the alternate access ended in a farm yard.

The lava flow by the cafe


Subaerial shield basalt in close up: phenocrysts of black pyroxene, white plagioclase feldspar and orange, weathered olivine.

Continuing SW along the coast we stopped at the mouth of another of the broad valleys that have been eroded into the flanks of the Jandia volcano where we had an opportunity to look around at loose material on the ground as well as at the sections through the volcano that are exposed in the valley sides.

A valley eroded into the SE flank of the Jandia shield volcano

Northern valley wall: there are supposed to be two phases of eruption, separated by an erosional unconformity. We saw some evidence of this around the island

Dykes intruding lava flows in the headwall of the valley. These would have fed later eruptions

From here we went on to the Degollada de Agua Oveja: a graded track leads up and over the arcuate ridge which is all that remains of the Jandia volcano. Most of it has disappeared NW into the Atlantic - perhaps in one mega flank collapse but more likely in a series of smaller slips. The scar is impressive... provided you can stand upright long enough to admire it! The wind was ferocious!

NW Face of what remains of the Jandia volcano

Jean, Jan A-J (the trip organiser) and Gill braving the wind at the top of the pass

By now it was lunchtime so we continued west to the little fishing village of El Puertito where we found a cafe where we were able to sit out of the wind.

The beach at El Puertito is cut by dykes

Faro de Jandia from El Puertito

Beach-comber art at El Puertito

Finally we made our way to the lighthouse on the headland, though unfortunately as it was a Monday the exhibition wasn't open.

Jandia Faro

Dunes in the lee of bushes Punta da Jandia

A longish drive and, perhaps, less of geological interest than in some other areas but the views, and the topography are stunning! Well worth spending a day there.

Day 4 - Casa de los Coroneles and El Cotillo

2010-10-31T18:45:00.005Z

This was an official day off and a car full of people who hadn't been to Lanzarote before decided to go over for the day on the car ferry.
Our car, plus one, went back up to the north of the island to explore. First off we stopped in La Oliva to see what else was there and found the Casa de los Coroneles - the original 'governor's residence. This has fallen into poor repair over the years but now the main house has been restored although the outbuildings are still in disrepair - hopefully there are plans for those too. There's no admission charge, something that rankles with some of the local people who feel that if tourists paid a small fee more work could be done for the benefit of La Oliva.

Casa de los Coroneles, La Oliva

The house itself is a lovely example of Spanish colonial architecture and when we visited we saw an art exhibition and one of photography as well as a set of exhibits themed around La Olivan life in past years.

Photo exhibition gallery

Patio

Morro Tabaiba

Trousers of ascending shortness

Thinking about lunch we headed over to the coast at El Cotillo where we enjoyed prawns with garlic and a crema catalan before going for a walk to see the castle.

A molino in Lajares

El Cotillo from the castle

And not a halloween ghoul or ghost in sight!

Day 3 - Cueva de Los Llanos, Bayuyo and Corralejo dunes

2010-10-30T20:01:00.003+01:00

We headed north to an area where some of the youngest volcanoes on the island have not only produced a line of scoria cones but also a long lava tube with interesting archaeology and fauna.
The Cueva de los Llanos north of La Oliva was our first 'proper' stop though since it didn't open until 10 we diverted to a cafe in La Oliva first.


La Oliva church plaza

Refreshed we headed back to the cave again where we had a chance to visit the exhibition before our tour. Then, after being fitted out with protective hair covers (much laughter), hard hats and head torches we were guided down through the jameo (skylight) and along some 400 m of one branch of the tube. The cave is important for palaeontology (vertebrate and gastropod fossils) and is unusual in preserving palaeoenvironmental changes well in the infilling sediment. It is also inhabited by an endemic arachnic, Maiorerus Randoi. Recently it was used as an arsenal and graffiti dating from this time decorate the walls at the far end. After we had eaten our lunch Julie the guide - having learned of our geological interests - showed us the palaeontological dig which isn't open to the public

The jameo that gives access to the tube

Maiorerus Randoi

Cute!


In the tube - we were able to see 'tide marks' left by flows moving through

Between here and Corralejo is a line of lava cones, Bayuyo, the highest, in the north. We found our way to a track that runs along the NW side of these and, to our delight, it was a good graded track. We stopped a couple of times to check out the ejecta which included a number of small mantle xenoliths of peridotite. At the second stop we were able to climb up to the lip of the breach.

The line of scoria cones north of Los Llanos

Looking for mantle xenoliths in the scoria

Returning we had good views from Corallejo to Lanzarote and the Isla de Lobos before stopping to check out the carbonate sands that form the extensive dune field to the south.

Isla de Lobos with Lanzarote behind

Corralejo carbonate sand dunes - formed from sand deposited when sea level was higher, and also from sand blown onshore when sea level was lower

Ajui and more of the Vega Ring Complex

2010-10-29T16:20:00.001+01:00

Day 2 of the F-island trip we went over to the west coast at Ajui/Puerto de la Pena where, as soon as we got out of the cars we were greeted by the sight of some splendid dykes cutting Mesozoic ocean floor sediments!
A well made path from the northern end of the beach leads up the cliff, past the overlying Pleistocene shallow water sands and marls, onto a ledge which we walked along to Caleta Negra, the next bay north. The sequence in the cliffs on the far side of the bay is stunning: upended Jurassic sediments cut by dykes as before at Ajui, then planed off by an erosion surface and then, above the unconformity, beach/coastal sediments and a lava flow, including a mass of pillow lavas in a channel!

The northern end of Ajui beach - vertical Mesozoic sediments at the bottom, intruded by dykes, then above that are Pleistocene sediments

Close view of the northern end of Ajui beach.

Sediments dipping steeply into the cliff are cut by a mafic dyke and both then cut by a trachyte dyke

Path up Ajui cliff makes it easy to walk upwards through the succession

Shallow water sediments at the top of the cliff

Caleta Negra


The cliff section at Caleta Negra

Originally we'd planned to walk on over the cliffs to the next bay and then up the barranco to investigate some more exposures of ocean crust but with temperatures climbing decided to leave that for another day. Instead we went back through Pajara and turned left to take the top road through the Vega Ring complex, stopping at miradors on the way.

A pebble of pyroxenite from the Tierra Mala instrusion just inland of Ajui, and south of the Vega ring complex

Mal Paso at the southern end of the Barranco below Vega de Rio Palmas: the white spot is the hermitage below the dam. An annular intrusion of syenite forms the hill in the centre and the slopes to the right.

From the mirador above the dam, we are standing on the crest of the syenite ridge looking north to a ridge formed of trachyte


From the second mirador, looking south over the dam between the two syenite hills. The embalse (reservoir) is currently dry and full of fine orange silt.

Tomorrow - to the north of the island!

The Betancuria Massif

2010-10-28T20:54:00.001+01:00

Looking north from Morro de Veloso

We began the day with a trip up to the mirador at Morro de Veloso where we managed to kill 3 birds with one stone - we saw some stupendous views across much of the island.

Spotting dyke trends along a track

We found evidence of the NNE-SSW trending dyke swarm ...

and we had a coffee!

Then we went on to see more evidence of dykes on the road south of Betancuria where the syenite dykes in a road cutting also contained blobs of darker, more mafic material

Cutting south of Betancuria

Syenite dyke with mafic blebs

.. as well as some stunning Liesegang ring patterns and manganese dendrites!

Liesegang rings and manganese dendrites

Vega de Rio de Palmas

From there we headed down into Vega de Rio de Palma where the track down towards the gorge promised a section through part of the igneous 'ring complex' - the heart of the shield volcano that existed here some 20 Ma ago.
The best was along the first part of the path where there were exposures of a beautiful pale gabbro with clumps of mafic minerals, all crosscut by at least 2 sets of dykes. Finally the high afternoon temperatures kicked in and we turned back and headed for the pool at Caleta de Fuste!

Gabbro in the Vega ring complex

Mafic and felsic dykes cutting the gabbro

Shade!

Fuerteventura

2010-10-24T19:31:00.000+01:00

... otherwise known as the F-island. A group of 12 OUGS 'Shoestringers' is due to arrive on Wednesday for 1-2 weeks DIY exploration of this fascinating island. Well it sounds fascinating anyway!
Unlike the ocean island volcano of Tenerife, with its shield and stratocone volcanoes and recent scoria cone eruptionsm which we know well by now, the F-island has remnants of submarine sediments deposited off the African coast in the Jurassic and Cretaceous as the Atlantic began to split apart. These are mixed in with submarine mid ocean ridge volcanics. Seamount(s) built up and, eventually, broke surface and built up as a shield volcano or three. An erosional phase followed, exposing much of the earlier seamount series including a ring complex of the associated plutonic rocks.
We are going to be based in Caleta de Fuste halfway down the east coast and close to the airport since that is a good jumping off point for both north and south parts of the island.

More when I get back

The Lot in September

2010-09-28T19:21:00.009+01:00

No I don't mean I got the lot in September- rather that I went to the Lot region of France for an autumn break! Geologically there's not an enormous amount of variety - essentially it is fairly flat bedded limestone, incised by river valleys. Perhaps the beauty of it is the deep, steep sided gorges and even more, the amazing cave systems and karst that have developed.

Spotted horses at Pech Merle (www.pechmerle.com)

Unfortunately an amazing show cave I went to at Pech Merle, near Cabrerets doesn't allow photography but you can see something of it at http://www.pechmerle.com/ Apart from the beautiful stalagmites and stalactites there are some amazing cave paintings (my favourite was a pair of spotted horses) - which you can see in the flesh (unlike those at nearby Lascaux which have been closed to the public for years and where you have to make do with a mock-up.

The countryside around abounds in karst features such as sink holes - hard to photograph here because they tend to be deep, steep sided and filled with trees. This was at Planegreze and I liked the minimalist dry stone walling nearby. The totally unphotogenic sink hole is over the back,

Drystone wall at Planegreze

The outer defensive wall at Oppidum Murcens

The gorges have provided wonderful defensive sites for settlements, from the Gallo-Roman 'headland' site of Oppidum Murcens to medieval sites at Rocamadour and Saint Cirq Lapopie which cling to the sides of gorges.


Rocamadour sits on the side of the Alzou gorge, a tributary of the Dordogne

Saint Cirq Lapopie is built above the Lot river

A Borie - a drystone field shelter

What we didn't see here were the hectares of limestone pavements that are evident in the 'causses' to the east of here around the Tarn valley but even so it was a great place to see the effects of geology on the landscape.

Limeslade Bay, Mumbles

2010-07-10T16:00:00.002+01:00

Popped down here for an hour out from the OUGS Symposium in Swansea - various jobs needing doing meant we didn't get out on the official trips. Anyway we drove through Mumbles and parked up near the coastguard and down onto Limeslade Beach where there were some impressive joints in the dipping limestone beds that had been filled by crystalline calcite.

There are joints on both sides of the beach - perhaps part of a larger joint system that facilitated erosion of the bay itself

Not oncoliths but rodoliths!

2010-06-16T10:33:00.001+01:00

Thanks to Professor Paul Wright I've now identified the round balls we found in Messinian sediments at Cala Cuerva in Almeria as rodoliths - balls created by red algae as it rolls back and forth - see the Wikipedia entry

From the top - close up of a rodolith

The exposure on the south side of Cala Cuerva

The rodolith bed

Rocks in between ther birds

2010-06-11T21:38:00.005+01:00

Had a great morning in the Sierra de Loja with Mick (see his Loja Wildlife blog for the birdy bits which he does much better than I can) - we saw birds we had never seen before, and really benefited from his expertise.

However, in between times we saw a few rocks as well - the whole area is superb karst - this part of southern Spain is one of the largest around the Mediterranean.
I actually like the windmills by the way and the birds all seem well able to avoid them.
We found some superb acicular calcite crystals of which, since they weren't in situ, we had no compunction about taking examples home. It actually looked as though they might have been brought in with the stone for the graded track we were driving on.

Coming back down the track there are some superb views towards the west. The town of Loja, north of the sierra, lies in a trough between the mountains along the line of the seismically active Crevillente (or Cadiz-Alicante) Fault which runs ENE-WSW just north of the internal zone of the Betic Cordillera and we are looking along the line of this towards Antequera.

Although at the higher levels the beds of limestone are dipping, we didn't see and fold however down towards the bottom of the track, above the A92 and a little way west of the Abades service area is a quarry where the limestone is folded into quite small scale upright folds.

In the face at the quarry's western end there is further evidence of the karstic nature of the area with a section through a vertical pipe lined with flowstone.

Panel number 2, quarries and millponds

2010-05-05T20:57:00.000+01:00

Met up with Derek first thing to discuss possibilities for a second panel (after getting some ideas yesterday) and we are up for it. Got some good ideas and he has been busy and got some sponsorship from John Grimes in the interim.

Then we went down to the granite quarries with Shelley finding, in the final one, past VC quarry, some beautiful smoky quartz crystals. Nipped into the tavern for a Lundy lamb pasty before the boat people got there and then pottered about till it was time to go down to the boat back to Ilfracombe. Mill pond crossing back which was welcome and then a trouble free coach transfer back from Ilfracombe to Bideford.

North Pole and back

2010-05-04T20:47:00.000+01:00

Well North light anyway!

One of the staff, Shelley who works in the restaurant, came with us for the morning as we explored northwards up the main track going over to the east side from time to time to look at the tors

We would like to have found basalt dykes cutting through the granite but didn't. however we did find quite a lot of aplite dykes, and found out that the stiles in the Quarter-, Halfway- and Three-quarter-walls are made of slabs of slate from the old billiard table from the Tavern.

We eventually found some mafic dykes down the steps towards the North light, and then some more as we wound our way back down the west side of the island. Phew. They are rather brown and weathered up at this level though and don't show up so well as they do from the sea.

By the time we got to Battery Point though everyone was too footsore and weary to go down to see the dyke I know is there and we took ourselves back to the Barn and a welcome cuppa.

We did see some of the Sika deer though

Heaving ho in(to) the Bristol Channel

2010-05-03T20:26:00.000+01:00

May Bank Holiday Monday saw us on Bideford Quay at 8am on a cold and - yes - frosty - morning (though we didn't go gathering nuts!)

Bags labelled and loaded onto the MS Oldenburg we found somewhere to sit and braced ourselves for 2 hrs of 'moderate' seas - there are moderate seas and moderate seas though and when they are coming broadside on it can be less than comfortable at times and a few of the group began to wonder why they were making the trip!

Arrived on time and most impressed by new jetty - even though it was going up and down a lot which made the gangway rather interesting.

Assembled on quay and found Derek Green the Manager, then had a look at the rather lovely and generally ignored Devonian slates which have some super folds and a number of deformations visible.

A little way up the hill though we were dismayed to find that the Lundyite 'Castle' dyke has been gunite-ed in the name of preserving the road. Asked about this later Derek said that the engineers had advised that the dyke, as well as the shaley slates, needed to be sprayed. We were unsure that a few millimetres of concrete would actually do anything apart from obscure the surface and prevent us looking at it.

Onward and upward we enjoyed a pint in the sunshine in the pub garden before going on over to the St Helena's church to hand over the interpretation panel - the purpose of our visit. We were impressed - it looks absolutely super and the gap above the other cabinet is absolutely asking for its twin so we were delighted when Derek proposed that we might discuss filling the gap.

The afternoon gave us an opportunity to explore the southern end of the island - Benjamin's Chair, the Rocket Pole Pond, and the Old Light before seeing off the day visitor party on their way to the quay (hoping it would be a bit calmer on the way back) and then found out accommodation and sorted out how to sleep 3 chaps and 8 women in a 6 bed room and a 7 bed room. Found out that the tavern serves excellent meals for £7.50 - we had venison meatballs

Geologists delayed by eruption

2010-04-18T20:34:00.000+01:00

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

2010-04-17T20:32:00.000+01:00

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

2010-04-16T20:29:00.000+01:00

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!

2010-04-15T18:29:00.000+01:00

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

2010-04-15T17:46:00.000+01:00

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

2010-04-14T18:39:00.000+01:00

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

2010-04-13T21:06:00.000+01:00

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

2010-04-10T20:21:00.000+01:00

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

2010-04-09T20:36:00.000+01:00

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

2010-04-09T20:34:00.000+01:00

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

2010-04-08T19:04:00.000+01:00

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

2010-04-07T18:52:00.000+01:00

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.

Portishead Old Red Sandstone and Carboniferous

2010-03-14T17:52:00.034Z

There was actually blue sky this morning, and even though it was a cold wind and clouds kept threatening to the south, on Portishead foreshore it stayed dry even if a bit bracing. 23 takers which was a good number - enough but not too many for comfort - and quite a few people who were on their first field trip, which was the idea of today's outing.

We met up at 10.30 on the Esplanade by the Lake Grounds and after some preliminary explanations about the regional geology set off SW on the path between the cliff and the saltings to have a look at the Old Red Sandstone exposures there.

The series here is at the northern end of a pericline (the Portishead anticline) and on its southern limb which means that we got a good section through a number of beds of Upper ORS age down through to the Lower ORS Nore Sandstone. There's a variety of lithologies ranging from silts through sandstone to conglomerate and the Nore Sandstone has some calcrete horizons at the top. Triassic Dolomitic Conglomerate, an immature sub-aerial fan breccia, has been deposited unconformably on the erosion surface along the front of the cliff , in one place, against a fault scarp and in another showing a classic exposure of an angular unconformity.
The ORS also includes a conglomerate bed - the polymict Woodhill Conglomerate which derives clasts possibly from the Mona complex on Anglesey and much better sorted and rounded clasts. It was interesting to compare this with the Dolomitic Conglomerate - they are very different!

The ORS was deposited on a broad coastal plain on the southern edge of the Old Red Sandstone continent: the beds are fluvial deposits and showed cross stratification, channeling and evidence of overbank deposits.

At the end of the section we went up the steps onto the cliff path and back to the Lake Grounds for lunch.

Afterwards (and after Jan had done some heavy marketing of the July Symposium!) we went down to the NE end of the Esplanade and up onto Portishead Point where we spent some time looking for fossils and working out the folding in the Carboniferous Black Rock Limestone (which also has Dolomitic Conglomerate sitting unconformably on the top). The memorial on the top of the point gave a glimpse of a different limestone - Portland? - an oolitic limestone with numerous Turritella fossils.

Down below the point and lower in the succession the fossils are much more obvious - expecially crinoid ossicles and brachiopods - and also neatly arranged at eye level which is really helpful for those who aren't as bendy as they used to be!
These rocks must have been deposited in a submarine environment, low energy but with occasional currents bringing in the broken shelly material. The Black Rock Limestone is fairly free from siliciclastic sediment so away from any terrestrial sediment source but the lower beds are sandier - so there must have been some input from the land to the north.

Walking back across the beach we came to the lower Avon Group (Lower Limestone Shale) and traced out a series of plunging folds in these calcareous shales which have been stained red by the overlying Trias.
From the oldest ORS in the south to the Black Rock Limestone in the north this area was covered by increasingly deep water, from a coastal plain, through near offshore, to a carbonate shelf environment in the Lower Carboniferous.
During the Variscan orogeny the rocks were pushed north on a series of thrust sheets which folded the rocks above the tips producing the Portishead anticline as well as the smaller folds in the Avon Group (and of course the bigger folds in the Mendips etc to the south. Uplift and erosion left a land surface on which the Triassic breccia was deposited.
... and very many thanks Severnisde Branch for letting me lead this trip - and for the bottle of 'Castillo de Calatrava' - the header of my blog is actually reddened ash deposits in the Calatrava volcanics in La Mancha, Spain - so very appropriate!

Kites, Minerals and Starlings

2010-02-14T18:27:00.004Z

Left Hereford lunchtime Friday and headed for Aberystwyth for a Minerals and Microscopes weekend with Bill and Charlie at the University. We stopped at Water Break its Neck to eat the rest of our sandwiches and got quite excited to see a couple of Red Kites... a couple of miles further down tthe road we saw 4 more... doing well we thought. Then near Rhyader we realised it must be feeding time for kites at Gigrin Farm - there were a couple of groups circling and there must have been upwards of 40 in each. Quite a sight considering how rare they used to be.

Lovely, accommodating hotel in Aber, where they didn't turn a hair as we slowly assembled tables into a longer and longer chain to accommodate our group of 30-ish. The Braines bitter was good too. Charlie and Bill came to see us after dinner, tell us where to be next morning at 9, and importantly how to get there!

Keen and eager, there we were, ready to get started by 9.15 or so and headed into crystal systems with the aid of neat sets of plaster models and untangled the rotational and mirror symmetry, sustained with coffee and biccies. Some of the models were a little more puzzling than others - like Colin's twinned trigonal example. After a lunch break at the Arts Centre on campus (amazing to find the place so busy and such a centre of the community!) we headed back to get to grips with mineral properties - again with the help of a drawerful of specimens - and then to identifying the minerals in various rock samples.

A quick 'airing' on the prom to blow the cobwebs away - but too chilly for more. then dinner which was a repeat performance of Friday night as far as the table chain went - oh and the tables were lovely black 'granite'.

Sunday morning we found another way back to the Uni - sort of vertically up a hill behind Llanbadarn church, but at least we found the right car park this time.

Microscopes were the order of the day - and started off gently enough looking at optical properties of minerals. However after lunch (to the accompaniment of chines music as it was New Year) we began to delve into the esoteric mysteries of the optical indicatrix, slow and fast directions, bertrand lenses, the proper use of condensers etc which left a few of us feeling a bit glazed over but with Bill and Charlie's help we mostly deglazed... partially at least ... and finished feeling we had learnt something.

Nearly 5pm but we had heard there was a starling roost on the pier so headed off for another chilly promenade and were rewarded with quite an amazing sight of masses of starlings turning up to spend the night - we weren't treated to one of their stunning aerobatic displays sadly but I can't say I blame them... a damp chilly evening and time to fluff up your feathers and keep the body heat in!

On right - Janet and Kath numbering their faces

The starlings were amazing! little clouds of them kept arriving.

You can see why they like it - lots of perches...

OUGS SW branch AGM weekend

2010-02-01T19:00:00.001Z

The venue, Hartland - in deepest, darkest north-west Devon with snow and hail threatening...

Michelle had organised a full programme though so not too much time to feel the cold! We kicked off with a talk about Geomagnetism by Chris Turbitt from the BGS before he took us to the nearby BGS Geomagnetic observatory to show us around. Son Oliver (foreground) did the technical bits with the powerpoint presentation!

Just a tad chilly by the time we had walked back we were very glad of the hot, tasty soup on offer before we settled down to an AGM that perhaps broke some records at 35 minutes! Two of us who were retiring from the committee (Mike Hermolle and myself) were both thanked and amongst other things received a super mounted colour photo, signed by all present - mine was one of the clapper bridge at Postbridge on Dartmoor which Chris Popham, the BO had taken.
After that we settled down to a couple of interesting talks:

Chris Cornford from nearby Hallsannery Field Centre on the 'Missing geology of North Devon' - i.e. the stuff that was there once and has since been eroded. All based on measurement of burial depths of various strata.
Peter Keene from Thematic Trails on the 'Geomorphology of the Hartland Peninsula

Jan and I stayed at Hartland Quay hotel so we set out to find it in the dark which was bit interesting as the road at the end just seemed to zig-zag out of sight down the cliff! The full moon helped.

Anyway that was negotiated OK before we all met up again - 30+ of us, for dinner at Fosfelle Hotel.

Next morning dawned dryish and cold, with a view of Lundy and assorted folds from the bedroom window. I was sorry I couldn't stay for the field trip but with a van full of assorted furniture and a 125 mile drive, and the weather a bit threatening we decided to pass.

Not before doing our own mini trip though - OK the view north (above) and the view south (right, with hailstones) from the car park

Chris Cornford had taken the group up the hill - to warm them up he said but we suspected it was because the tide was still fairly high so we were able to give them a last wave as we passed before heading off for the snowy delights of the North Devon Link road.

Great weekend - well done Chris and Michelle!

Microscopes in Nepal

2010-01-22T09:29:00.001Z

Back in mid-2009 I was asked by my Regional Director if I knew where a microscope could be got to replace the worn-out one at a school in Nepal. This coincided with the end of a course where microscopes were supplied to students and its replacement by one that used an amazing, online 'virtual microscope' so, and I was able to get hold of not one but two - a 'normal' microscope and a petrological microscope.
As the Okhle area doesn't have much in the way of electricity, Glynda, my contact at Walton Hall, organised the warehouse into removing the electric light sources below the staging and replacing them with mirrors that could use natural light.
As it seemed that the science teacher in Okhle was familiar with using a microscope for biology that was fine, but I felt that a petrological one might well be new to him so I included a set of the geology course materials, as well as full instructions.
Eileen, my RD's contact, (who had got involved with this on a trek to Nepal) came up to Bristol and we handed the microscopes etc over to her to pass onto Richard Backwell, the leading light in all this! She added a lot of useful biology material as well and they were finally taken out on a trek just before Christmas 2009.
I was thrilled recently to get a couple of photos of them being handed over:

At Saraswati secondary school Sean, an A level student who went on the trek, is showing the science teacher the microscope and Bimal Gurung (the guide, and instigator of all the work that has gone on in the villages) is the round faced person, without a hat, to Sean's left. This school has never had a microscope before (although the science teacher used one at university).

At Bayapani secondary school Sean is seen again, with the English teacher and some of the pupils.
The schools have around 300 pupils each and are about half to 3/4 of an hour's walk from Okhle itself.
There is more about Ohkle, which lies in the Himalayan foothills south of Mt Everest, and the work that is being done there on the village trust's website www.ohkle.org.uk and about Bimal's trekking company at www.adventureguidenepal.com

My new tutor group

2010-01-19T16:02:00.001Z

Very excited today as I got the details of my students for the new OU geology course which starts at the end of the month! Several of them have been in touch already too!
On Saturday we have the briefing meeting for the tutors at Walton Hall - I'm really looking forward to meeting up with them - some I know and some I've not met before, and getting to know the material for the course.

Great excitement ... I was in the Bristol office today and my course materials had arrived so I've been spending the evening having a good read ready for Saturday

Wales in the Cretaceous

2010-01-18T15:51:00.003Z

Went to a good OUGS meeting in Cardiff on 17th. Elizbeth McIntryre brought along a 3D geology map she has made of the Cross Fell area - the latest of many such splendid creations!

Although it was the AGM meeting and we had to get that out of the way first, after lunch we were treated to a fascinating talk by Professor John Cope on 'The new Cretaceous palaeogeography with some interesting ideas about how a radial drainage pattern centred on the Irish Sea was Cretaceous in origin and resulted from doming in that area linked to N Atlantic opening...

Had a look at the 'Diversity' display in Cardiff museum where I was impressed by the mineral display and had a good lunch at the Wig & Pen as well!

Prepping for Almeria 2010

2010-01-12T19:21:00.000Z

A bonus of all the wet weather in Spain was that I had time to roost indoors and make a start on my field notes for the OUGS Almeria trip in April.
Jan and I recce'd some new locations when we were there on 'holiday' last June, including a supoer exposure right at the bottom of the campsite at Las Negras: rocas rosas y violas which have been hydrothermally and meteorically weathered to produce some amazing and very photogenic exposures. Sadly I didn't realise that I'd got my camera set to low resolution :-(
We also managed to find a couple of new graded tracks (with concomitant exposures) to satisfy Jan's desire for off-roading in a camper van.

Floods in Huetor Tajar

2010-01-12T12:00:00.000Z

We had some really wet weather on our recent trip to La Paz, coincided with the snow in the UK which closed Bristol Airport so that our flight back was cancelled!

We'd been watching the water roaring down the culvert at the back of the house on the day we were supposed to leave. Fortunately the winter storms have now deepened this enough for the water not to flood over on our side but it was fascinating watching as cubic metres of soil and stones collapsed on the far side.

On Thursday morning we tried to drive down to Huetor to go to the supermarket as we'd run down supplies before returning to the UK but the road was flooded (as friend Mick's blog http://www.lojawildlife.com/2010/01/realenga-de-agicampe-granada-province.html shows!) and we had to wait until later. Even then the redonda (ring road) was flooded - though passable.

However the bridge which links the town to Venta Nueva and the A92 Autovia was shut - water right up to the bridge - but more hazardously, flowing across the road on the far side. A flood had taken down the railings either side of the road previously and with the fast current could have been quite dangerous for anyone trying to drive through!

Devon in the snow

2010-01-09T21:11:00.000Z

Flying over snow-covered Devon yesterday afternoon on the way back to Bristol was an amazing sight - easy to spot Dartmoor by the lack of woods and hedgerows - gave a really good idea of the shape and size of it.
Could see all the way down to the Lizard - rather like the big painting of Cornwall from the air in Truro cathedral.
In contrast, Bristol airport was cloudy, cold and snow-covered, and the car needed rocking and pushing before we could shift it!

Tres Reyes in Loja 2010

2010-01-09T18:00:00.001Z

A really wet week, but Caspar Melchior and Balthasar must have thought we (or they!) needed a break as it was a dry evening on the 5th for the cavalcade. Some nifty parking 'off-route' by Mick ensured that we wouldn't get blocked in by the procession if we wanted to make a quick getaway. Then a walk down the main street to get to a good position near the start.

Plenty of good loud pasodoble type music, and quite a few Disney characters marching along which the really small kids loved. Then the 'floats' with more dressed up characters including the 3 Kings (non-Disney versions!) all hurling sweets - and a few other gifts like mobile phones! - into the crowd. Loads of kids scrabbling around feet to get as many sweets as possible - and quite a few grown ups joining in as well. The best prepared had capacious, sturdy bags, and even upturned brollies to do a bit of catching. Others just stuffed their pockets.

Then we followed the cavalcade back down the street for a much needed copa de vino - the bar was packed but even so we still got free tapas - great place Granada province.