We started out from the North end of Holyrood park, next to Dynamic Earth and the Parliament Building, climbing up first towards St. Anthony’s Chapel. We stopped on the ledge just below the chapel where you can find some carbonised plant remains. I was almost entirely certain that I took a photo of these, but judging by the contents of my memory card I apparently didn’t. The view down towards St. Margaret’s Loch is pretty however:

St. Margaret's Loch

View back Towards Edinburgh

From St. Anthony’s Chapel you can see back the way we climbed (see above). At this point we’re already up onto the Basaltic Lavas which make up Whinny Hill. From here we continued climbing upwards, eventually transitioning from the Lavas to some Agglomerates. The top of Arthur’s seat is a mixture of Vent Breccias as well as porphyritic Basalts.

Foreground: Vent Breccia | Middle Distance: Dunsapie Hill (Basalt) | Far Distance: North Berwick

Posing for Photos halfway up

View out from the Top (Basalt), over Salisbury Crags (Basic Sill). Note Castle Rock in the distance (Basaltic Plug/Crag and Tail)

At the top we waited for the large group of tourists to get out of the way, then stopped for a break at the trig point. At this point Jono decided to regale us with the delightful tale of a group of his friends who apparently decided to strip-off up there on a foggy day. This is a fairly typical Jono story.

Jono and Katie at the Top (view North towards the Firth of Forth)

We then continued westwards, going down the hard way. Here’s the slightly terrifying view back towards the top:

View Back up (Foreground is mostly Agglomerate, Peak is Basaltic)

Jono seemed keen for some Quaternary Geology, so being the nerd I am I decided to take them down to the Roche Moutonnée which is nicely exposed as a road cutting on Queen’s Drive. My memory proved accurate, and we actually scrambled down the hillside basically right on top of it, startling a group of Rabbits. Whilst coming down we once again stopped for a quick break, and Jono took what has become one of my favourite photos of me:

Perched on an Outcrop

I failed to get a good photo of the Roche Moutonnée, but if you’re dead keen I’m sure you can find one elsewhere. Before heading down for lunch I dragged the pair to one last stop: Hutton’s Section. Then, on the way back round we also briefly passed Samson’s Ribs – an example of lovely columnar jointing.

Jono's (Hutton's) Section

Samson's Ribs

Holyrood Park is a great day out if you’re wanting to get out into the field and clamber over some rocks. We only spent about 2 and a half hours there (so as not to bore the non-geologists too much), and barely scratched the surface of what you can see there – there’s heaps of other things to look at. So if you’re ever in Edinburgh and have a bit of free time, it’s a great place to go. It helps that it’s only 10 minutes away from the centre of the city.

The usual drill with regards to photos, higher resolution examples can be found on my flickr page (until they get knocked off by new ones).

Recommended Reading:

Craig, G.Y. and Duff, P. McL. D. (Eds). (1975). The Geology of the Lothians and South East Scotland: An Excursion Guide. Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh. [This is a great book, but I can't imagine it's particularly easy to find copies of].

University of Edinburgh Field Trip Info – Really fantastic summary of what’s going on with the geology of the area. I highly recommend it.

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.

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.

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.

This time we checked the opening times, made sure that there were no public holidays on (not even Glasgow City Council could use Oak Apple Day as an excuse surely) and even packed lunch supplies (ie we stopped at a newsagents to buy salt-laden Dairylea concoctions).

Arriving at Victoria Park we were greeted with this sight:

It's Open!

Not only was it open, it was actually staffed! (albeit by a guy sitting in a van eating his lunch).

We headed inside to have a good nosey around.

The view inside.

8 or 9 stumps can be seen from the viewing platform, many with their roots visible and intact. The casts of the trees are so good in places that you can clearly see the impressions of the ‘bark’ preserved. Also preserved are sections of trunk and branches scattered around on the floor.

Trunk Section

Illuminated Stump

Note the preserved surface details

The walls of the building itself have displays explaining the formation of the deposits, as well as describing the location at the time of fossilisation. Examples of various plant and animal life are shown, including some samples donated from the Hunterian Museum.

How these fossils formed

Interestingly, when discovered these deposits also included organic material left on the trees from fossilised plant material. This has since been removed or weathered off (I wonder if anyone got a sample of this; it might be worth looking at from a biomarker perspective).

Bark Impressions

Finally, after a good nose around, we went and played in the sun for a while:

"Race you to the top!"

And that’s all folks! For the previous posts in this series look here.

Once again I highly recommend the Geological Society of Glasgow’s guidebook: Geological Excursions around Glasgow & Girvan (ISBN: 0-902892-09-6),

7:42 AM Apr 9th : In the field from 8:30 this morning to avoid the tides. Brutally early start. – RJ

11:09 AM Apr 9th : Tide coming in quickly. Exposures being hidden unfortunately. Finely lam. Sandstones. Found crinoid fossils – HS

10:31 AM Apr 9th : Looking at a very rare palaeo-fulgurite. – RJ

Fossilised Lightning Strike

1:32 PM Apr 9th : Finished early for the day (highly unusual), going for a tour of the brewery and distillery – geologists work hard, and play hard. – RJ

Between the rock outcrops being underwater, horrific weather and being done for the day we all decided a bit of a break was in order. (Inevitably, this was when the weather got better).

3:59 PM Apr 9th : Carlsberg dont do geology field trips, but if they did, it would be Arran ‘09. – HS

Arran Brewery

The fake waterfall at Arran Distillery

The Distillery tour at least mentioned the geology of Arran having an effect on Whisky; so we had some justification for going there rather than working. (Maltman, 2003)

8:25 PM Apr 9th : Completed (rather damp) geological map of Carboniferous rocks around corrie. – RJ

The Carboniferous of Corrie

9:00 PM Apr 9th : Hard at work at 9pm finishing off our geological maps. – RJ

Working downstairs in the Shorehouse

Hazel and Emma looking Sad

As Might be Evident from this picture, the place is locked up. It’s almost as if some idiot forgot to check when it was open…

Open Thursday–Monday 10am–4pm, late March–late September

Crap. I’m just not used to rocks having opening times.

In any event, we decided to make the best of things by having a wander around the park itself. Fossil Grove is situated in a Whinstone quarry, meaning that we should at least have some Quartz-Dolerite sills to look at.

The quarry has been turned into a rather attractive rock garden which, despite some graffiti issues, is a lovely little area of the park. We clambered up the side of the sill to have a little nosey at the rocks. We were also able to examine the centre of the sill, where it had been cut through to make a pathway. Here we could see a noticeable difference in grain size; with the slower cooled centre having much larger crystals. None of this really came out with my camera, but here’s a picture of me and Hazel clambering up it.

Checking out the Dolerite Sill

The day wasn’t entirely a waste on the Palaeobiology front however, since Hazel did manage to find some dinosaurs! (In an area of Lower Carboniferous sediments, and Late Carboniferous sills – not exactly the place you’d expect).

Hazel Finds a Dinosaur

Some pictures of Fossil Grove can be found here, and we might try and pop back sometime this week or next week (hopefully on a day when it’s actually open to the public).

Recommended Reading:

More Info From the Geological Society of Glasgow [446kb PDF]
Lawson, J.D. & Weedon, D.S. 1992. Geological Excursions around Glasgow & Girvan. Geological Society of Glasgow.