This earthcache is located
in the Holker Estuary. The area is known as Old Park Woods after
the local caravan park. The earthcache here is for the limestone
cliffs.
If you go to the GZ,
you should be able to see the Limestone cliffs. This limestone is
Carboniferous limestone. This means it was formed in a tropical sea
which covered the UK 359 million years ago. This would have occured
in the Dinantian sub period of the Carboniferous
era.
Carboniferous limestone is a sedimentary
rock made of calcium carbonate. It is generally light-grey in
colour, and is hard. It was formed in warm, shallow tropical seas
teeming with life. The rock is made up of the shells and hard parts
of millions of sea creatures, some up to 30 cm in length, encased
in carbonate mud. Fossil corals, brachiopods and crinoids are very
much in evidence as components of Carboniferous limestone; indeed
the rock is full of fossils.
Carboniferous limestone has horizontal layers (beds) with
bedding planes, and vertical joints. These joints are weaknesses in
the rock, which are exploited by agents of both denudation and
weathering. They also lead to the most important characteristic of
Carboniferous limestone - its permeability. Water seeps through the
joints in the limestone. This creates a landscape that lacks
surface drainage but which has all manner of characteristic surface
and subsurface features. The Carboniferous Limestone has been
folded and faulted by massive Earth movements which can be seen by
the fact that the rocks are now above sea-level and no longer
horizontal.
In order to claim this
Earthcache as find please carry out the following
requests.
1)
Please take a picture of the cliffs with you or your GPS in the
photo
2)
Please take a picture of the bedding planes.
3)
Estimate the height of the cliffs.
4)
Take a picture of some aspect of the wildlife. This can be flowers,
birds, fungi - anything you want.
Please include all
photographs in the logs and email me the answers to the
questions.