Time to get a hat

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

Tapas and Tallante xenoliths

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

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

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

Majada Redonda reccy

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

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

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

Malaga to Villaricos

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

Portishead Old Red Sandstone and Carboniferous

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

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

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!