- Finally managed to wrap up the lab work. We’re now at the data interpretation and paper writing stage, which I am almost no help with – as much of it is still well beyond me. Still, expect to see more updates on this if/when the paper is published.

Borders Trip

- Scremerston

- Eildons
In addition to popping down to the coast we also finally climbed the Eildons (after not managing it last time). Unfortunately, from a geological standpoint this wasn’t too exciting as the rock outcrops were very weathered and sparse. Still, it was a nice mornings climb.

The Largest Eildon

The largest Eildon – note the slightly stepped appearance, this is due to compositional differences in the layering of the lacolith.

Path Erosion in Progress

An Iron Age Hill Fort (believe it or not)

Northern Ireland Trip

- I ferried my way across to Northern Ireland to spend a weekend with my friend Mark. We did the usual tourist wander around Belfast and drove up to see the Giant’s Causeway, possibly the most famous geological site in the UK, and a fantastic example of Columnar Jointed Basalt.

And then we went to Bushmills distillery on the way back; which was good, but nowhere near on par with Scottish Whisky.

(sorry about the slightly poorer photo quality – forgot my digital camera, so used my iPhone)

Giant's Causeway

Causeway

Entirely Inappropriate Footwear (and columnar jointing)

As usual, more photos can be seen on my flickr page.

London Trip

- Once again I also made my annual journey down to London for Apple Campus Rep training, probably not supposed to talk too much about this online though. It was good fun though, and I got to meet lots of interesting people. If you’re in a UK Higher Education establishment I’ll once again plug the discount of up to 15% that you can get from Apple here. /shamelessplug

Up Next:

• This Months Accretionary Wedge (if I get it done before deadline).
• A couple of write ups from class field trips (after I’ve done them, and after the deadline for any work based on them).

So we decided to drive down to the beach at Scremerston, a stretch of coast in the North-East of England just south of Berwick. It’s a stretch of Carboniferous Limestones, Shales, Sandstones and some coal layers. The palaeoenvironment is basically that of a coast line; with remnants of Corals, Crinoids and Brachiopods which lived in shallow waters as well as coal swamps on land. There’s quite a lot of folding evident along the beach as well, some of which is visible on Google Maps.
We parked alongside what I think is an old coastal defence position, had lunch, then headed down to the beach to do some fossil hunting.

Gunnery Position

Since we mostly just wandered around randomly I won’t try and describe the locality in a particularly systematic fashion, instead I will attempt to highlight the various fossils and structural features that can be found in the area.

Large Brachiopods (Possibly Gigantoproductids)

Note the extremely bioclastic nature of the rock – it’s basically all shell fragments.

Trace Fossils

As previously mentioned on this blog, my palaeontology skills aren’t fantastic, but I think these are probably Gastropod trails.

Rugose Coral

Rugose Corals

Geode in Cavity

Sectioned Crinoid Stems

Crinoids are particularly abundant in this area. If you’re looking for specimens there is a fantastic bed of soft, weathered rock where you can practically pick them out with your fingers at approximately 55°43.725′ N by 1°57.072′ W.

Dipping Beds

In places large sections of strata are exposed, including (at the bottom right of this image) the occasional coal seam.

Folding

Further north up the beach are some delightful examples of folding, with various parts of the fold exposed – some showing quite complex structures.

More Folding

Fold hinge (note the extensive veining)

Me

Fold Hingeline

The dunes above the shoreline are also of interest, albeit not so much to geologists. The area is host to a wide variety of fairly rare butterflies, a couple of which I was able to photograph (rather  inexpertly).

Spot the butterfly

As usual, all of these photos are up on my flickr page here (at least until they get knocked of by new ones – I have a non-pro account).

The area is a great day out, and specimens of Brachiopods, Crinoids, Corals, trace fossils, iron nodules, geodes, folding, veining, rootlets above coal seams, and a whole lot more can all be found in a kilometre or so of coastline. You might hear more from me on this topic in the future, as I’m seriously considering it as the location for next summer’s mapping project.

We have loads of beautiful geology in our backyards here in Scotland, and there’s so much of it I still want to see. We’ll hopefully make another, longer, trip down at some point in the future. Stay tuned.

Homeward Bound

Our Transport - The Green Blur, and our mascot - Trevor the Trilobite

Once again we were incredibly pushed for time; so much so that we didn’t have time to climb up the Eildons, instead contenting ourselves with a view from afar. However, that didn’t stop us from examining some of the geology of the area. Across the road from where we parked is Bowdenmoor Quarry; a quarried mass of Sanidine-Trachyte in Silurian country rocks which shares its origin with the Eildon Hills themselves. They were all part of the same intermediate-acidic layered lacolith (with one exception, which I’ll get to shortly).

The Quarry (picture by Hazel Scott)

I collected some nice samples of Sanidine-Trachyte here:

Sanidine-trachyte - note the phenocrysts

Since we had to get moving, we headed up the road, but not before snapping some more pics.

The Mid (lacolith) and Little (vent) Hills

The largest hill (left) is a part of the lacolith, consisting of layered sheets of trachyte and felsite (I wish we’d had time to get a bit of the Riebeckite-felsite). The smaller hill on the right (which isn’t usually counted as one of the three Eildon hills) is actually a volcanic vent intruded later. It consists of a central core of basalt and quartz-porphyry as well as some agglomerate.

Before getting in the car to drive across to the west coast (via Dob’s Linn) we couldn’t pass up the opportunity for another photo.

Emma and I in front of the Wester Hill

Behind us is the reservoir (which I think is man-made) and behind that is the Wester Hill – another part of the lacolith.

The Alternative Unconformity

Since it was about 8:30pm we decided not to clamber down to it, as we were losing the light. Instead we climbed over the top to view the classic Siccar Point example of the unconformity.

Hutton's Unconformity

Again, since we were pressed for time and the cliff was in shadow we decided not to climb down and look at it close up. Instead we spent time posing for photos holding the unconformity:

Hutton's UC

Finally we walked back down the way we were supposed to have come up, stopping to look at the helpful sign explaining the whole thing.

Info Board

We then drove back up to Galashiels, and spent the night playing Guitar Hero.

Burnmouth Beach

Unfortunately we arrived shortly before high tide, with most of the fossiliferous beds marked in our helpful guidebook (McAdam et al. 1992) drowned by the sea. Despite that, the cliffs to the South looked interesting so we ambled down there, stopping occasionally to look at the lovely micaceous sandstone pebbles covering the beach. Some of the features seen on the cliffs are shown below:

Steeply Dipping Micaceous Sandstone

Small Deformation Bands

Odd weathering effect (heterogeneous cementation?)

One of the interesting things found here (which none of us had encountered in the field before) was what appears to be a geode:

Geode

Cross Bedding was also evident in some of the rock; although it also varied from finely laminated to massive in sections.

Cross-Bedding

At this point we ran out of beach, so were forced to climb up on top of the cliffs to continue southwards.

Steeply Dipping Beds submerged by tides

We continued south, seeing some wonderful looking things from afar. However, due to a combination of high tides and being on top of a cliff we weren’t able to inspect them up close.

More reddish Sandstones

A Sea Stack colonised by Seagulls

This sea stack is apparently called the Maiden’s Stone and, from a distance, appears to be a cross-bedded sandstone.

We stopped for a quick snack above a ruined old cottage; which the map claims is an old fishery.

The view down from our picnic spot

It was around 18:00 now (we’d had a late start) so we decided to head back to the car, so that we would have time to visit our next two stops: The excellent Chippy in Eyemouth and Siccar Point.

Hazel and Emma

Recommended Reading:

McAdam, A. D., Clarkson, E. N. K., and Stone, P.. (1992). Scottish Borders Geology: an excursion guide. Scottish Academic Press.