April 2016
Friday 1st
Thoughts on poetry and spring
I like poetry. I like writing poetry and I like reading some of it.
I enjoy reading poetry that has a strong rhyme scheme like Sea Fever, or an interesting narrative or has a different way of looking at things, perhaps on nature, and emotions. To me, the best line in all poetry is:
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.
If you have been to sea, you will know how apt and evocative this is.
I am a little old fashioned in that I am not keen on what is called poetry or free verse but is really just a jumble of words that don’t seem to say anything.
I do enjoy writing to a structure. I have had a go at couplets, pastiches of poets, I also enjoy words on the page that have a certain shape and perhaps tell you a little more about the poem, I really enjoy writing Haku and other esoteric forms such as Tanka, Etheree and fibonacci. My favourite is the sonnet form, written in iambic pentameter such as:-
Ambrosia
Shall I compare thee to a can of rice
Round of body but top and base conflate:
Financial storms inflate the bogof price,
Anne Summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hard the might of Tesco strike,
And oft his gold ramps up the price
as every fair trade cost from far oft places spike:
By chance or corporate plans change to gneiss
But thy internal dessert shall not decay,
Nor lose possession of that fair trade thou must;
Nor shall Death erode and change day to day
When time advances, to sell by or change to rust
So long as men can breathe, or palate can taste
So long lives this, not set to fall to waste
The chimney
The first little pig built me from straw.
He realised me quickly, time to do more?
The reed was so cheap, soon thatched together
Everyone was happy, I kept out the weather.
The second little pig built me from wood
He put me together as a joiner should.
Wooden planks roamed all over the roof
Knocked into place with the little pig’s hoof.
The third little pig built me from brick
She built me strongly so that I would stick
in place on the roof in spite of the wind,
that the wolf huffed and could not rescind.
The moral of this story has to be
If you want strong chimneys, always choose she.
Saturday 2nd
My new 'Science Fiction and a little Steam Punk' collection of 33 strange stories is published today on Amazon.
Just click the 'Amazon' link on the Left or go to the links page.
I wonder what will be next? Perhaps a poetry collection?
Sunday 3rd
Death of an iceberg
I am an ice child of the Arctic North,
calved from my mother into alien waters.
A sibling procession down the Polar Stream.
We are Leviathan, Behemoth, Titanic and Growler.
Sweat trickles down my icy flanks as I heat in the sun.
My bottom is licked away by warm ripples
until I topple to reveal old tidemarks
as I shrink to a melted
death
.
Friday 22nd
A day on Dartmoor
It is a real effort to get out of bed early, make the fish paste sandwiches and the the thermos of hot sweet coffee - not forgetting to collate all this with a new, fresh packet of fig rolls. It has to be done. It had been too long since I visited and said hello to all my old friendly tors who had been waiting to greet me; and I them.
The M5 South is fairly quiet, such that I can choose to cruise at my speed without weaving from lane to lane. These are all working drivers, not Friday holiday changeovers to D & C - Devon and Cornwall in case you are wondering. The car’s warm, music playing, the joy of listening to Schubert and Pergolesi while internally debating where to go - all Dartmoor beckons. Spoilet for choice. Should it be Fernworthy and Sittaford Tor with its echoes of the past with the stone circles in the forest and the twin Grey Wethers past the wall on the moor, the keening wind searching through the groaning pines? Should it be Sticklepath with its boardwalks across the swamp, through lichen-covered dwarf trees? No, it will be the circle walk from Belstone today. I savour the decision and look forward to the delights in store.
Exeter comes and gets left in my wake, the M5 fades out to the A38 and A30. I choose the route to North Devon, through the red Devonian cliffs at the junction. These 420million year old deposits are slowly turning green over the years as the cutting is colonised by plants and grass. Now to follow the A30 as it swoops along through the hills of Devon. The usual names come and fade behind, ‘Pathfinder Village’, ‘Crediton', ‘Oakhampton’ until ‘Whiddon Down’ looms and I know I need the next turn off. There it is, ‘Belstone and Sticklepath’. I slow and adjust to Devon speed, take the slip and then turn away, reluctantly, from the ‘Okehampton’ sign - no Meldon today. I Pass the garage and the Little Chef lookalike cafe then turn right onto the Belstone Road. A little lane to the cattle grid, a rumble then slow for the turn into the car park before the village.
The car stops with a sigh, the music off - replaced by birdsong as I open the door. I don walking boots, check the rucksack for food, drink, map and compass. Lock car, zip, keys into pocket, hat and gloves on, belly band and chest strap tightened then start walking. Through the timeless village, past the stocks, seven Dartmoor ponies grazing on the village green by the pub. Granite houses, slate roofs, curls of smoke from chimneys. No people, all quiet. A blanket of peace hangs over the village. Past the giant beech trees sheltering the many seats overlooking the common, Belstone Cleeve and further across the valley to Cosdon Hill.
A little further on there is a cottage with a lot of rusty farm machinery outside, including my favourite piece, a very old tractor that looks as if it is growing out of the tarmac by the wayside. All the tyres are flat, it has been standing there for at least thirty years in my memory. The mud guards can just been seen as grey but there are now ventilation holes along them, dissolved away by the continuous dampness in the combe. Veer to the left at the fork - a stern sign commands ‘No turning beyond this sign’. I assume it only applies to cars and as I am a pedestrian, I do no worry too much. The range board appears warning of all sorts of range firing. It is only the Army so I do not worry about that either. Of more concern are the many signs about sheep worrying tacked up on fenceposts and tree trunks. Haven’t they called in a woolly psychiatrist yet?
The tarmac fades out to be replaced with great slabs of granite. It is the ‘Giant Granite’ judging by the huge feldspar crystals - up to two inches long. I pass through the gateway, carefully closing the gate behind me - don’t want those sheep any more worried than they are already by a draught through an open gate.
I stop, relishing the fact that I am now on the moor. I look up in the direction of Belstone Tor. I start the climb My legs hurt at first in protest but they soon warm to the task of getting this lump of protein and the rucksack up the hill. I stop at the break of slope as the gradient eases off. I stop, for the view of course, my laboured breathing has nothing to do with it. I start again, determined to get to the top this time. I navigate the grey granite clitter as I approach the Tor and then the final scramble up the rocks to the top. I briefly stand on the highest point, exulting in the cold wind and the hazy view across North Devon - a few new windmills turning lazily in the distance, harvesting the power of the wind - at the cost of a few minced birds no doubt. I drop a few feet to my favourite spot in the lee of the rocks to shelter from the Westerly. I shrug off the rucksack and extract the gardener’s pad to sit on to insulate me from the insult of the cold, lumpy rock. I gronf one sandwich and two fig rolls as I allow myself half a cap of coffee. From my seat I can see right across Devon - Laird of all I survey.
I tune my ears away from the wind keening through the gaps in the rocks, I hear birdsong, I tune in further and separate two skylarks rising in their blithe soaring into the steel grey sky.
The only fly in the oinkment - sorry sheep not pigs was the foul miasma arising from the moor. It was covered in sheep pellets, there are sheep everywhere The complete moor is sheepwrecked ( Thanks to George Monbiot for that excellent descriptive word. ). I have seen the fenced off old tin mine shafts ober towards the South West where the moor has been allowed to flourish without the killer sheep destroying every seedling that has the temerity to pop its head above the surface. The ground there is covered in lush grass and blueberry bushes, green and beautiful. Imagine if the complete Moor was rewilded and just allowed to grow and develop as it wanted. How much more beautiful - and sweet smelling - it would be.
I don’t really do economics but if you read ‘Feral’ by George Monbiot, you will find that there is no economic justification for the sheep. I would like to hear a counter argument from you - if you can come up with one. I’ll bet my 300 million years against your ‘hundreds of years of history’ if you try and use the devalued ‘ Justified by history’ argument.
I feed my soul with the view and the sound for a few minutes longer, until I feel the chill of the wind finding its way to my core. Pack up, sweep the area for left-behinds and then head down through the South facing clitter to the pass between Belstone and Higher Tors. threading through the gap in Irishman’s wall created by many feet of man and sheep. Easy walking across the stiff grass to Higher and then follow the ridge towards Oke Tor. Halfway there, is a small outcrop of horizontally emplaced granite. I know from previous walks that there is a small plastic jar secreted in a crevice beneath a slab, closed by a couple of rocks with some wisps of grass to camouflage it. I carefully remove the grass and the small rocks. There it is, still there after six years. I open it and read it again. It is a message to ‘who ever passes this way’ and talks from the heart of Pippa whose husband, Russell died. She left this note here after his death as it was one of their favourite spots. She also named the tor, ‘Russtor’ in his memory. She moved to Cambridge after he died. I always check and read it every time I pass this way. A memory to lasting love encased in 300 million year old Cornubian Granite.
Time to move on to Oke Tor. A wild and windy spot on top of the ridge, just inside the Army Rangle. No flag up on Steeperton so no firing today. The Army must be on leave but I hope the Navy isn’t in case another Spanish Armada threatens Devonport. It is best here in a Dartmoor mist when the crags of the Tor look up just like the figures on Easter Island. I carefully search along the Eastern side until I find the Elvan Dykes. These were emplaced in the harder, coarser granite that surrounds the. The Elvans are softer so have been quarried for building stone. Their squareness as they just out from the side of the Tor make them look unnatural but they are not - just later, fine-grained granite. Time for another quick gronf of a sandwich, fish paste again - unsurprisingly as I made them, a fig roll and a half cup of coffee.
Now for the first real downhill part of the walk, down to the ford across the River Taw, just before it flows down into Steeperton Gorge. Now there is a choice, whether to scramble up the steep but short shoulder of Steeperton or take a the longer but leisurely stroll up from the ford to the saddle between Steeperton and Hangingstone Hill. I take the scramble, knowing that I can rest at the top of Steeperton, in the shelter if it raining or too windy. From the top it is a drop to Steeperton Brook, a leap across the stream and then head for Metheral Hill. A sharpish drop again and then a long slow climb to the summit of Cosdon Hill.
No time for a rest, I have a destination in mind, a target, an objective. I headed North down the unpathed slope of Cosden, unable to see the footbridge over the Taw because of the steepening drop. I picked up a path, followed it through the clumps of gorse that remain after the burning. The path drops steeply and becomes more stoney as the footfall has worn through the thin grass and soil.
There is the footbridge with the latched gates at each end. The water rushes under at speed. The river is still in its mountain torrent stage. It shortly turns to the East and follows the deep green gorge of Belstone Cleeve before heading across North Devon to the sea near Barnstaple. I cross the wooden bridge on the non-slip checken wire before starting the struggle up the steep hill back to the common and then a slow wander through the village back to the car. I seek a warm cup of coffee from the thermos but it is nearly cold so I give up and start the car to head for my objective.
I park around the back then gratefully enter and take a seat, enjoying the warm smell of frying bacon. I salivate and change from ‘just a coffee; to ‘a coffee and a bacon sandwich.’ I chew the bacon gratefully while reviewing the day, with a touch of feeling that I wish I was still up among the great, grey friendly high Tors.
I’ll be back there soon.
Thursday 28th
A Bristol Geology U3A walk around Tanpit Wood from St Bartholomews Church
Portishead Beds - Upper Old Red Sandstone
Black Nore Sandstone - Lower Old Red Sandstone
Tufa Dams
Springs
Spring line
Unconformity
Limestone - Lower Limestone Shales of the Avon Group
Carboniferous fossils
Example of a break of slope.
Drive towards Bristol on the B3128. Pass the Failand Inn on your right and then turn left into Oxhouse Lane. Follow this to the ’Tee’ junction and turn left, to park carefully on the verge by St Bartholomew’s Church.
This is a delighjtful place for a walk, especially during the Spring when the wood is carpeted with wild garlic and blubells with other spring flowers bursting through. Most of these are unknow to me but I was shown the yellow rattle which, when upturned shows the 'fairy slippers' on the stem.
Enter the field via a stile directly opposite the Tee junction. Walk down the hill, keeping close to the hedge field boundary on your right. At the right hand corner of the field surmount another stile and then walk downhill to a gate under a big tree. After the gate there is another with a wall stretching off to your right for some 50M. Examine closely the stone blocks of which the wall is made. This is quite a coarse sandstone, as a hand lens will show, and also has many clasts of vein quartz included. There are several clues as to what material it is and where it came from. The cross bedding indicates it was laid down in a river - Fluvial sandstone. The grains of sand are polished rather than frosted - so again it is water, not air, borne. The clasts,or pebbles, included in the matrix are of hard quartz but have been eroded so they are rounded or sub rounded., indicating that they have travelled a long distance. There are also some brown pebbles of Jasper. Putting all of this together, it is thought that these pebbles have come a long distance in a powerful river from the North West. Some pebbles have been identified as coming from the Mona complex in Anglesea. This is the Black Nore Sandstone of the Lower Old Red Sandstone. It was probably laid down in the Emsian Stage of the Devonian Period, 407.6 million to 393.3 million years ago. It has minimal fossils in it. The reason for looking at the wall is that there are no exposures or quarries in this strata where it can be seen in situ.
Now follow a hedge back up the hill to the road but this time follow a hedge line heading further to the East, keeping it on your left. Check the capping stones on the top of the wall by the cattle trough - are they all Black Nore Sandstones - without fossils? During the winter, when the leaves are off the hedge plants, a wall can be seen in the middle of the hedge. This wall becomes more distinct as the road at the top of the hill is approached. A close inspection will show that it was built using similar stones that have already been seen. Use the stile to get back on the road where a National Trust interpretation board for the Failand Estate can be seen, close to the hedge.
Directly across the road there is a track with a public footpath sign. Follow this track down a steep hill, passing a few cottages on the left. At the bottom of the hill, rejoin Sandy Lane , turning right to follow it down to the ford by Mulberry Farm. The farm house garden wall is partly built on exposed bedrock. These are the Portishead Beds and more exposures will be seen later in the walk.
Turn right at the Farm and follow the footpath through a gate, keeping the wood and stream on your left. The stream is called Markham Brook. It flows into the River Avon at Pill. Go through a gate into the wood. Just in front of you is abridge across the stream. Cross the bridge, to the left a small pump house can be seen. A look inside will show the pump housing while in the side of the stream an iron pipe can be seen. This worked on the hydraulic ram principle. The pressure in the pipe from higher up in the stream increased until it was high enough to trigger the ram with an audible thump - thus pumping water up the hill to a storage tank near to where it was needed. One of these tanks can be seen by the side of the road on the way back to the church. The use of this water supply to Lower Failand continued until the 1950’s.
Follow the stream until you see a second bridge. Cross this bridge, turn to the right and follow a path along a gully until a fallen tree can be seen. Look to the right at the stream and look for a tufa dam in the stream. The water has passed through the limestone, dissolving carbonate minerals. Where it passes over a cascade, carbon dioxide is released. The minerals come out of solution and are deposited as carbonate rock. This slowly builds up to form a tufa dam. This is the same way that stalactites are formed in Limestone caves.These are relatively rare features in the UK so please do not disturb this example in any way. A separate, more detailed explanation, is in appendix 3.
West Tan Pit Wood is so called because leather was tanned using the clean water. Pits were dug and lined with oak and used for leather tanning. The tannins leached from the oak bark to soften the hides.
Return to the bridge and walk on to a ’Tee’ junction with another path, noting the sandstone crag exposure to your right. These are Upper Old Red Sandstones from the Devonian period and are known as the Portishead Beds. This rock is impermeable so the streams flow on the surface here. These are younger than the Black Nore Sandstones previously seen. The also have a different habit in that there are minimal pebble inclusions and the cross bedding is more defined. These deposits were laid down during the Famennian stage of the Upper Devonian period 372.2 to 358.9 million years ago Subtracting the end of the Emsian stage, 393.3, from the start of the Famennian, 372.2, you get a gap of about 21 million years. During this time either nothing was deposited or something was deposited and then was subsequently eroded away. Either way, there is a time gap between the two strata, this is called an unconformity.
Turn right on to the other path, noting the carved wooden sign. Follow the path to a gate which allows entrance to a grassy area with an artificial circular pond A rest may be taken on a thoughtfully provided seat to enjoy the pool with its backdrop of a small cliff of the sandstone. Walk further on, taking the right hand fork across the grass to see a natural-looking pool with no apparent water supply, even though water is flowing out. It may be fed through a hidden pipe from the spring-fed stream in the garden. This is one of the springs and is flowing out of the Limestone overlying the Sandstone. The Limestone is permeable so the water can flow through it but cannot enter the impermeable Sandstone so emerges at the surface as a spring and runs downhill as a stream.
Follow the path up a short, steep incline to a path junction at the end of the road, in front of a large garage. If you are lucky enough to encounter the owner of the garage, Colin, he may show you the contents. An old lorry, an Austin 7, an old caravan, a beautiful American Ford of C. 1923 and a Triumph Road Rocket motorbike of 1953, now fully restored. He will be happy to tell you all about them - as he did me. He usually exhibits at the North Somerset Show on May Bank Holiday. The two houses there are called Ferney Row.
I digress from the geology. As I said, progress up the hill then turn right and cross the field, keeping the hedge on your left. A gate into a wood will appear. Pass through the gate, which may be surrounded by deep mud. and follow the track noting the springs on the hillside to your left and and the rock in the track bed. This is the limestone which rests conformably on the Devonian Sandstone. This is Carboniferous Limestone - Lower Limestone Shales from the Avon Group. This is younger than the Devonian Sandstones. As its name implies, this was laid down in the Carboniferous period, in fact it is the basal strata of the Carboniferous succession.
At the beginning of the Carboniferous the arid terrestrial environment of the Devonian gave way to shallow marine conditions. The Mendip area became part of a broad, southward shelving, shallow tropical sea that stretched from Belgium westwards into Pembrokeshire. The initial flooding of the region produced the mud-rich Avon Group (Lower Limestone Shale), This is up to 150 m thick in the western Mendips. The dominant lithology is fissile mudstone with limestone interbeds. The mud-rich nature of the succession reflects the environmental transition from arid desert to shallow sea. Conditions were too turbid to allow the growth of corals, which are a feature of much of the lower Carboniferous succession, but other marine fossils such as crinoids, brachiopods and bryozoans became well-established and are a significant component of limestones in the lower part of the succession, including a marker-horizon known as the 'Bryozoa Bed'. Ripples, scours and cross-bedding in the limestones show that deposition occurred in a shallow, high energy environment, and some of the limestones are distinctly reddened due to high concentrations of the iron mineral haematite. The higher part of the formation contains greenish-grey shales and black crinoidal limestones, which were probably deposited in a slightly more open-water marine setting.
Keep an eye on the verges and the track bed, you will be very unlucky if you do not see some brachiopod and Crinoid fossils there. Note also that the track is mostly dry - as the limestone is permeable. The dip of the strata may also be seen in the track bed.
Continue along the lane, pass a wooden bungalow on your right and eventually arrive at Oxhouse Lane complete with the Forestry Commission Wood notice board. Turn to the right and follow the lane back up to the church. Just after leaving the track, you will see on the right an exposure of the Portishead beds showing that this is very close to the contact between the Limestone and Sandstone - hence the springs in this area. The road will lead you up the hill. Halfway up the hill, look back to the hill on the other side of the valley and the road to the wood. You will see a ridge running across the field. This is called a break of slope and marks the transition to the harder Black Rock Limestone from the softer Lower Limestone Shales. The harder and softer rocks are eroded at different rates so forming the ridge. This is called differential erosion. Just before you reach a footpath off the the right, you may be able to see another small pump house hidden in a piece of woodland.When passing Failand House to your right, an inspection of the gate posts will reveal that they are made from Black Nore Sandstone. The house is owned by the National Trust but there is no public access.
Arriving back outside St Batholomew’s Church, it is worth having a look at the building stones. The church was built by Richard Vaughan in 1887. The areas that require freestones - window frames, statue niches etc. are made from Bath Stone. This is a cream Oolitic limestone from the Great or Inferior Oolite, probably from one of the quarries on Dundry Hill. The walls are built from the local Black Nore Sandstone, the pebbles can clearly be seen. The colour of the walls also hints at the Old Red Sandstone. Inside, the font is also made from Bath stone. The steeple can be seen to be cream rather than red so is probably made from Bath stone as the individual blocks would need to have been shaped during the building process.
It is always worth looking at churches, from the geological point of view, as they were usually built mainly from the closest available suitable stone to reduce costs. Transport was more expensive than the quarrying costs. They are therefore a marker for the quarries and rock to be found locally.
There is a booklet, available for 10p at the church or a web site - see appendix 1 at the end of the booklet.
It is also interesting to see that the churchyard is bounded by a wall made from the same Devonian stone. However this wall is topped by a different sandstone. This is the Pennant Sandstone from the Carboniferous period. This gives a delightful colour contrast to the main mass of the boundary wall.