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Roseberry Topping EarthCache

Hidden : 1/10/2012
Difficulty:
1.5 out of 5
Terrain:
3.5 out of 5

Size: Size:   not chosen (not chosen)

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Geocache Description:

Roseberry Topping is a distinctive hill on the border between North Yorkshire and the borough of Redcar and Cleveland.

It is situated near Great Ayton and Newton under Roseberry. Its summit has a distinctive half-cone shape with a jagged cliff, which has led to many comparisons with the much higher Matterhorn in Switzerland. It forms a symbolic image of the area and featured as the logo for the now defunct Cleveland County.


At 1,049 feet (320 m), Roseberry Topping was traditionally thought to be the highest hill on the North York Moors;[2] however, the nearby Urra Moor is higher, at 1,490 feet (450 m). It offers views of Captain Cook's Monument at Easby Moor and the monument at Eston Nab.


The hill is an outlier of the North York Moors uplands. It is formed from sandstone laid down in the Middle and Lower Jurassic periods, between 208 and 165 million years ago, which constitutes the youngest sandstone to be found in any of the National Parks in England and Wales. Its distinctive conical shape is the result of the hill's hard sandstone cap protecting the underlying shales and clays from erosion by the effects of ice, wind and rain.



Until 1914, the summit resembled a sugarloaf until a geological fault and possibly nearby alum and ironstone mining caused its collapse. The area immediately below the summit is still extensively pitted and scarred from the former mineworks. The summit has magnificent views across the Cleveland plain as far as the Pennines on a clear day, some 40 to 50 miles (60 to 80 km) away.

Sandstone


(sometimes known as arenite) is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.
Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow, red, gray, pink, white and black. Since sandstone beds often form highly visible cliffs and other topographic features, certain colours of sandstone have been strongly identified with certain regions.
Rock formations that are primarily composed of sandstone usually allow percolation of water and other fluids and are porous enough to store large quantities, making them valuable aquifers and petroleum reservoirs. Fine-grained aquifers, such as sandstones, are more apt to filter out pollutants from the surface than are rocks with cracks and crevices, such as limestone or other rocks fractured by seismic activity.

Shale


Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock composed of mud that is a mix of flakes of clay minerals and tiny fragments (silt-sized particles) of other minerals, especially quartz and calcite. The ratio of clay to other minerals is variable. Shale is characterized by breaks along thin laminae or parallel layering or bedding less than one centimeter in thickness, called fissility. Mudstones, on the other hand, are similar in composition but do not show the fissility.

History

The hill was held in special regard by the Vikings who settled in Cleveland in large numbers during the early medieval period and gave the area many of its place names. They gave Roseberry Topping its present name, which is one of only a handful of known pagan names in England. "Roseberry" came from Old Norse Óðins bjarg ("Odin's rock or crag"), after the Norse god Odin. The name changed successively to Othensberg, Ohenseberg, Ounsberry and Ouesberry before finally settling on Roseberry. "Topping" is a corruption of toppen, an Old Norse word for a hill. The naming of the hill followed a well-established pattern in continental Europe of hills and mountains being named after Odin or the Germanic equivalent, Wodan. Ælfric of Eynsham, writing in the 10th century, recorded how "the heathens made him into a celebrated god and made offerings to him at crossroads and brought oblations to high hills for him. This god was honoured among all heathens and he is called ... Oðon in Danish.

To log the cache please E-Mail me the answers to the following questions.

1-What has caused the unusual shape of Roseberry Topping

2-Find me a Piece of shale and describe the texture.


3-Sandstone comes in many colour's tell me why Roseberry Topping is red.

A photo of Roseberry topping would be nice

Source Wikipedia



Additional Hints (Decrypt)

N ovt uvyy

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
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N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)