Geology Trip

Geology Trip

I had the oppertunity to attend a trip along with the Warwickshire Geology Conservation Group to the peak district for a tour.

There was a lot of walking at talking about rock and a good time all around - I was a bit nervous as the first time I had been out with people I didnt know well but it all seemed to go well.

Trip down

I took the train across after work. To the small station in the lake district. It was a nice claming journey.

Talk at the start

Any holiday trip is best to start with a talk, reading material and graphs!

First day

There was a lot of walking today with large views of this part of the north peak district. At that time there would have been a shallow coral lagoon dropping off to deeper water. This was all burried and re-exposed such that the situation from that time was re-exposed.

On the walk there were a lot of big views out over the landscape.

We saw a lot of the evidence of the lead mining with straight series of small pits going for miles following lead containing fissuers and I managed to find a small sample of lead-ore in an old spoilt tip.

There were oviously many stops to view rock faces to point out the local stratigraphy and I am slowly getting better at correctly recognising things.

One of the most interesting historical bits was the old main road from Mancester to Sheffield. This was build in the 1800’s on a more gentle shale ascent through the peaks. Unfortunatly it was gentle as it was an old (50,000 year) shale landslip that was still (very) slowly moving. As this was upgraded ofer the years to a tarmaced road this lead to needing to make constant repairs as the ground moved under it. Until it was abondonded in the 1970’s. The national trust has looked after it since.

Looking at it you could see how much the road had moved since then upto 5 meters and with various shearing you could see many layers of the previous road surfaces as it had been repaired.

In the shale I did find some fossils though it was to fragmentary to recover. These were in the deeper water around the lagoon. After burial their minerals were forced in the sorrounding rock to make lead veins.

The hydrocarbons were condensed too and this strata is one people were investigating fracking in other parts of the country.

Second day

After a nice breakfast we went on another walk on the second day in the dark peak away from the white peak of the previous day.

The geology of this part of the walk was mostly on intrustion and magma flow into the local county rock

One meeting point exposed in a railway cutting has been cut back recently that shows it better for the first time in a century and challenged some nothions as to if this was a flow or a (shallow) intrusion.

And to end a nice relaxing picture of the river