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.

Anyway, back to our little excursion. We parked the car at the inconspicuous parking spot next to Dob’s Linn (the little valley is almost completely unsignposted or marked in any way – probably to help preserve it).

Dob's Linn from the road

We wandered up through the valley, finding the occasional graptolite rich fragment amongst the large scree slopes of black shale. Turning left we climbed up the Linn branch (a warning to people wanting to follow us, this involves clambering round some steep scree slopes – it’s not the safest excursion for the young or infirm and is extremely unwise to do alone). This branch of the gorge is really quite lovely, both geologically and aesthetically:

Some lovely, slightly folded shales to the South side of the branch

Ripple Marks (I've cheated here, this is a photo from a prior visit)

The Waterfall at the End of the Branch

That waterfall was particularly lovely last time I visited the area, in the deepest darkest Scottish Winter:

Frozen Waterfall

There are two excavated areas in Dob’s Linn: the Linn trench and the North trench. Both of these trenches show large sections of the strata, which have been examined and catalogued in detail by Lapworth and later Williams. Time didn’t allow us the opportunity to examine the North trench, however we were able to see the Linn branch trench, and examine the scree slope below it – within which many Graptolite specimens could be found.

The Linn Branch Trench

This photograph covers the border between the Ordovician (from where the photograph was taken) and the Silurian (where Hazel is sitting). Somewhere between us (I can’t put my finger on exactly where) is the FAD of Akidograptus Ascensus – the acknowledged boundary or ‘golden spike’.

After this we clambered back down and drove west to Moffat then back up the west coast. It’s worth noting that there are a great deal of excellent examples of slope failure along the road to Moffat (this area would make a fantastic day trip for a geography or geology class).

Following are a number of photographs of samples obtained from the loose scree material:

Some small fragmented graptolites - few specimens are preserved completely intact

More Examples

Not entirely sure what these are - any suggestions?

Layer of pyrite within the shale

These shales are really lovely, you can pull apart layers with your hands to reveal a new layer filled with graptolites or, as above, pyrite.

9:34 AM Apr 10th : Pigtails are the choice of hair style for field trips! At blackwaterfoot goin to look at some ig. Rocks. – HS

9:35 AM Apr 10th : King’s Cave today as well I think. – RJ

12:24 PM Apr 10th : Stopping for lunch next to doon sill. Lots of lovely Igneous rocks. Now off to the caves. – HS

12:28 PM Apr 10th : ‘The Doon’ – a great big sill, seen from the beach and the view from halfway up. – RJ

The Doon Sill

Slightly closer View

Field Sketch

Sketch Diagram of the Base of the Sill

12:30 PM Apr 10th : The real reason we wear hard hats. – RJ

The real reason Geologists wear hard hats.

12:31 PM Apr 10th : Small intrusions with brilliant chilled margins. – RJ

Lovely Chilled Margins

2:00 PM Apr 10th : Just scrambled up a muddy waterfall, through a gorse thicket to touch John’s ‘thing’, turned out to be Triassic reptile footprints. – RJ

This innuendo probably requires an explanation. John wanted to make the Isochirotherium footprints a surprise for the groups so was referring to it as his ‘thing’. We of course took that statement and ran with it. (For more info about these check out Neil Clark’s paper in the latest volume of the Scottish Journal of Geology – Vol. 45 pt. 1)

Reptile Footprints

2:29 PM Apr 10th : Weather has turned really lovely, skimming rocks while we wait for everyone to look at the footprints. – RJ

The footprints were halfway up a waterfall and fairly inaccessible – so we went up 5 people at a time.

2:58 PM Apr 10th : A wee snake on the path. – RJ

A Snake in the Grass

3:14 PM Apr 10th : In king’s cave – a raised sandstone sea cave. – RJ

King's Cave

8:18 PM Apr 10th : Listening to John Faithful lecturing on paleogene igneous activity. – RJ