The Geology of Charnwood

Greetings Folks!

Last weekend, I made yet another trip to the East Midlands to rejoin my wife at our new home in Loughborough. My mum and dad came down with us as well to see the new house. We had a great weekend, despite the miserable weather - rain, rain and more rain! How very British!

Anyway, the rain did finally stop just before Sunday lunchtime, allowing us to go for a drive round the local area. During the drive we stopped in an interesting area of the Charnwood Forest in Leicestershire, which turns out to be a particularly significant area of Britain in geological terms! I had heard that Charnwood contains some of the oldest rocks in Britain, but knew little more than that. On our short walk (it had to be short to avoid potential hypothermia in several of our inappropriately dressed party!), we did see some interesting exposures of what seemed to be granite, but I didn't think that these were the rumoured 'oldest rocks in Britain'.

As you'll be beginning to realise by now, I'm not the sort of person who is going to leave it at that! No Sir-eee! A little delving within the 'wibbly-wobbly web' was required to enlighten this curious wannabee geologist! Here's what I've found in an article by Mike Lewis, extracted from his book 'The Rocks of Charnwood Forest'. Click here.

Pre-cambrian rock exposure at Bradgate Park, Leicestershire.

(Photo: from www.naturalengland.co.uk)

There are indeed rocks of pre-cambrian age in the Charnwood Forest area and they are volcanic in origin. Back in the early Palaeozoic, this area formed part of the southern fringe of a continent of which Scandinavia and northern Scotland also formed a part. Volcanic eruptions occurred over a prolonged period from a major crater that is now located near to High Sharpley. Other smaller vents surrounding the main volcano also contributed. Material ejected from the volcano was deposited around the crater for several kilometres with a high proportion carried in the wind in a southerly direction.

There was a great amount of variation in the size of volcanic material produced, which lead to the formation of the agglomerates, tuffs and ashes evident in the exposures seen at Beacon Hill. (See map).

As the period of vulcanism subsided, grading and sedimentation occurred on the sides of the volcano, leading to large areas of conglomerates, overlain by volcanic mudstones. This series of rocks is called 'The Brand Series' and are particularly evident in the western parts of the region as outcrops such as the 'Hanging Stones' beneath Beacon Hill, Billa Barra and Groby.

After the period of volcanic activity, the mid Palaeozoic period saw uplift and folding and the creation of a huge anticline. The numerous faults that were thus created allowed igneous intrusions to form through them which are now seen as the syenite outcrops at Groby, the 'Altar Stones' at Markfield and Cliffe Hill.

Apparently, the dome at Charnwood would have been several thousand feet higher than it now is while its base would have been over a thousand feet lower than its present elevation due to the continuous erosion, stripping rocks from the exposed surfaces, filling the surrounding valleys with the eroded material.

Following this we entered the carboniferous period with the surrounding valleys being swamps and shallow marine environments. The Triassic period saw Charnwood buried beneath dry desert clay-sands ultimately forming marls. The impermeable nature of marls thus allowed shallow lakes to form. The Cenozoic saw further erosion in the tropical environment and the following glacial periods of the Pleistocene added its own process of 'freeze-thaw' erosion and examples of Charnwood rocks have been found in places some considerable distance from the area due to glacial transportation.

So there you go! An rather brief geological history of Charnwood! That's what I have deduced from a bit of reading and may be somewhat abbreviated and maybe even wrong!?! If there is a 'proper geologist looking in who has spotted any alarming errors, please feel free to correct me! As I have said before in a previous blog, we learn just as much by being told we've got it wrong, as we do when we are being patted on the back! What I need to do now of course, is get out there, see all these outcrops for myself and take some photos! When I do I'll update this blog and post them up!

There has also been an interesting development within the younger members of the family recently! My 16 year old daughter Anna, while revising for her GCSE Geography exam, has been bombarding me with questions about geology and rocks recently and has developed a particular fondness for saying 'slatey cleavage' as often as possible! AND even Aimee who is 11, has been asking me what a glacier is and how it forms! So perhaps they are both gradually beginning to realise that maybe geology AND their step-father aren't quite as boring as they once thought? There's nothing quite like getting outside and 'into the geology' to make it all come alive!

One final thing to note is that the pre-cambrian rocks of Charnwood include within them, fossils of some of the earliest examples of multi-cellular life forms on earth! More on this next time!

Cheers for now!

Alyn.

Time to read some books!

Greetings!

What a strange feeling it is! With the Open University course now all wrapped up, I'm left with a slightly empty feeling! No assignment to aim for? No deadline to meet? Weird!?!

Having got over that realisation now, I find I am able to go ahead and read a book without having to necessarily write a 500 word appraisal of it, (mind you, the type of books I read, I tend to do that in my head anyway!) So at least now I am able to get stuck into my two 'birthday books'. My mum and dad gave me some money for my birthday, so I purchased 2 geology books would you believe?

Firstly, I got a book called "The Earth After Us", by Jan Zalasiewicz. In this book, the author imagines what a population of alien visitors to Earth would make of our planet when they arrive 100 million years from now, long after the human being has gone the same way as the Dodo. What have we humans left behind in the fossil record? What will these aliens make of the 'human stratum' and how will they judge us? I've just started this one and it's a fascinating read as I've often wondered myself, what evidence of our lives will be left millons of years from now? What will the remains of say, a landfill site look like millions of years from now? Bottles, both glass and plastic, mountains of diposable nappies, all compressed and changed into another form presumably, but what? I'll read on and see what unfolds!

Incidentally, by pure coincidence, Jan Zalasiewicz just happens to be a lecturer in Geology at Leicester University and I met him and had a brief chat while at an open day at the Uni last July! When I spotted the book in Waterstones a while ago, I recognised the name from somewhere, but couldn't place it. A quick look at the sleeve notes and the penny dropped!

The second book is one I've been itching to buy ever since I heard about it's imminent publication. Following my family's trip to Arizona last year, I've been fascinated not only by the Canyon, but the whole of the Colorado Plateau area. While there, I bought a book by Wayne Ranney (I may have mentioned it before within this blog? Maybe a million times?) called 'Carving Grand Canyon', which is a superb book, detailing the theories and mysteries surrounding the possible formation of Grand Canyon. Well, the multitude of staggering geological wonders to be found in the American southwest are inextricably linked to the ever changing Colorado Plateau and this is the subject of Wayne Ranney's latest book "Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau".

Written in collaboration with his onetime Northern Arizona University lecturer Ron Blakey, this publication is a truly stunning book! I only picked it up from the postal depot this morning, but a brief flick through it's pages reveal Ron's palaeogeographical maps in all their glory. Let's not beat around the bush - Ron's ground breaking maps are a work of utter genius (see the slideshow of his world maps at the lower right column of this blog!) and their publication is long overdue! Together with loads of explanatory diagrams and Wayne's text, it looks an absolute gem of a book! I'll let you know more and maybe do my own little reviews of these books at a later date.

Cheers for now!
Alyn.

Education - 'tis a wonderful thing!

Well, that's just about that!

After nine months sweat and toil, it's almost over! S104: Exploring Science, is all but over with only the 25 question computer marked assignment left to do. Astonishingly, I achieved a whopping 97% in my final tutor marked assignment, which means that if I manage to get 85% on my End of Course Assessment, I will be awarded a 'distinction'!!!

When I started out on this journey nine months ago, the goals were merely to see if I was up to study again after donkeys years of nothing, learn a bit and see if I can pass an Open University course - nothing more than that really. With all that has gone on domestically since the turn of the year, it's frankly astonishing that I have even a sniff of a distinction. There have been times when I even considered, albeit briefly, to throw the towel in. With so much going on around me, to then sit down and try to grapple with Quantum Physics, was a 'big ask' as Mark Lawrenson would say!

But this course has given me so much that I never even considered beforehand. I now find myself routinely reading the BBC Science web pages, NASA's Mars mission pages and countless others to feed my almost unquenchable thirst for knowledge. But to have this thirst at the ripe old age of 49 is kind of interesting. I can never remember ever having had such an enthusiasm for learning all those years ago in school. Not even in college either! I'm left thinking that maybe one needs to 'live life' a bit, experience the repetitive dullness of employment, before one realises what is truly exciting and stimulating in life. In that sense, education is rather lost on the young. School and indeed further education seems geared to getting 'a job' at the end of it, without thinking beyond that.

Well folks, listen up! THERE'S MORE TO LIFE THAN GETTING TO THE TOP OF THE CORPORATE LADDER!

There, I've said it! Tar 'n feather me if you like, but that's what I feel. I can assure you, when I get my Geology degree, I won't be seeking employment with another consulting engineers, to resume that climb up the ladder again (not that I ever got above the second rung previously!). Nope, of more interest to me is research. As I've already said, if I can make some contribution, however small to the multitude of questions, asking how Grand Canyon came to be the way it is, I will die a happy man! If I can write a geology book like Wayne Ranney's, that make this wonderful subject understandable to the interested layman I will be very proud indeed!

That's got to be preferable to meaningless staff appraisals, 'taking ownership of your deliverables' and endless corporate 'tosh' surely?

Each to their own, I guess.

Until next time!

Cheers,
Alyn

End of Course Asssessment looming!

Greetings Folks!
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So, the pressure mounts! The deadline for the S104, Exploring Science, end of course assessment is 28th of May! It's a HUGE piece of work and I have to say, I am not at all impressed with the Open University's choice of cut off date! They say we should post off our work at least 4 days before the deadline. Well, that just happens to be a Bank Holiday, so there is no postal service that day! The day before that is a Sunday, so there's no postal service then either! So I will have to look at getting it posted on Saturday 23rd at the latest. However, I'm going to be away for the weekend, so that means I'll need to have everything done and dusted by the end of next Thursday night! Arrrrrrgggghhh!!???!!!

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Anyway, that aside, it's going reasonably well so far and I think I'm on schedule to finish it in time. Just about!?! Progress was hampered by the OU's insistence on including an exercise that requires online discussions and contributions to the course forum. This involves online research and also needs the cooperation and efforts of all your fellow students to spark an online debate! Well, having to rely on ones online colleagues was never going to be that straight forward and the 'debate' has been virtually non-existant. Only 7 people have contributed anything at all, out of about 15 who started the couse in our group! That suggests either a major drop out rate or some students simply sacrificing a few marks in favour of getting on with the rest of the questions without this ill conceived hassle interrupting their flow! Maybe a wise choice, I'm beginning to think!?!
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AND, I've still not received my mark for my final tutor marked assignment, so I don't know at this stage what my final mark is for my course work. My tutor has been pretty excellent thorughout the whole course, taking over at short notice after our original Canadian tutor failed to get her work permit renewed and consequently got shown the door. I've already passed the course work anyway, so it's not that important I guess.
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Oh blimey, somebody stop me moaning! That's something my wife and I are doing way, WAY too much at the moment, but I guess that's just a sign of the stress we are under right now! There's got to be an outlet somehow!
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So tomorrow, Ruth and I are going to have a bit of stress relief by going to watch our beloved Bolton Wanderers play Hull City at the Reebok Stadium in what is the final home match of the Premier League season! It's a bit of an 'end of season' affair with nothing at stake for the Wanderers, but poor old Hull are hanging by a thread to their Premier League status! Should be fun!
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Before I go, take a look at this photo from the BBC Science web site which blew my mind this week!

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Taken by Hubble telescope, it shows a huge cluster of galaxies some 13 billion light years away! S104 has made me think a lot about the sheer scale of the universe and bearing in mind the vastness of our own galaxy, to then consider a whole cluster of galaxies as shown here, just goes to highlight the almost unfathomable immensity of the universe! When I finish my course, I'll have lots more time to talk about this stuff in more detail!
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Better get on - I've got an assessment to finish!
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Cheers for now!
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Alyn

Hanging in there!

Greetings folks!

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Apologies for the deadly silence over the last few weeks! It's not that there hasn't been anything to blog about recently - far from it! But it has been a frantically busy, and extremely stressful time, not just for me, but all of my family too in so many ways. Where do I begin?

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Well as you know, as it stands I am living in our home of five years in Bolton, in the north west of England with our eldest daughter Anna-Ruth who is now in the midst of her GCSE exams. So Anna has a whole heap of stress to cope with and thankfully, so far, she's taking it all in her stride. Meanwhile, my darling wife Ruth and our youngest daughter Aimee Claire, have moved to Loughborough, in the East Midlands. Aimee has settled in superbly to her new school while Ruth gradually gets to grips with her new role in Nottingham Trent University.

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Starting a new job is tricky enough, but with the family split up from Sunday evening until Friday evening each week it obviously means that for Ruth, all the family childcare duties such as taking Aimee to Guides/trampolining/guitar lessons etc etc falls completely in her lap. Ruths mum and dad chip in of course with the school run and stuff like that, but it all leaves Ruth with precious little time to 'chill' or do anything for herself. It's all taking its toll which is heart breaking for me and I feel so helpless, being over 100 miles away!

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So it all makes our weekends so precious. Either I travel down to Loughborough or Ruth travels up to Bolton, which naturally costs a fortune in petrol at a time when our finances are stretched while trying to run two homes, albeit temporarily! And then there is the problem of employment! Ruth has obviously started her new job, but I now need to find an alternative position for myself by mid June. Encouragingly, I've been getting positive vibes from my current employers about the possibility of a transfer to one of its other offices in the East Midlands - either Nottingham or Derby. So hopefully something will come of that and give me one less thing to worry about.

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Now, just for a laugh, throw into the mix the small matter of me trying to finish my Open University science foundation course! I have now done all the computer marked and tutor marked assignments and averaged at about 83%. Only one blip of 60% has scuppered the chance of a distinction! So given the circumstances of my study, I think it's nothing short of a miracle that I've been able to achieve what I have. It has given me a lot of confidence that when I finally start my MGeol degree at Leicester Uni I will be able to achieve great things. Yes folks, after careful consideration, I have deferred my place at Leicester to the September 2010 start, which was a difficult, but necessary decision. That will give me a year to settle in Loughborough and be properly ready to get cracking! Can't wait!!!!

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So there you have it. A brief snapshot of the crazy, mentally and physically draining, mad, mad world of Alyn, Ruth and family! One things for sure - when all four of us are finally reunited in our new home in Loughborough, there will be

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ONE HELL OF A PARTY!!!!

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So, after getting all that off my chest, I'll get back to geology next time, which will be soon - promise!

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Cheers for now,

Alyn.