Along with Ramshaw Rocks and Hen Cloud they form a
gritstone escarpment, which is very popular with hikers, rock
climbers and freerunners. It is often very busy especially at
weekends.
The Roaches are the most prominent part of a curving ridge which
extends for several miles from Hen Cloud in the south to Back
Forest and Hangingstone in the northwest. Nearby are the broad
hills of Gun and Mixon.
GRITSTONE
Gritstone or Grit is a hard, coarse-grained, siliceous
sandstone. This term is especially applied to such sandstones that
are quarried for building material. British gritstone was used for
millstones to mill flour, to grind wood into pulp for paper and for
grindstones to sharpen blades. "Grit" is often applied to
sandstones composed of angular sand grains. It may commonly contain
small pebbles.
The Millstone Grit is an informal term for a succession of
gritstones which are to be found in the Peak District and Pennines
of northern England. These sediments were laid down in the late
(upper) Paleozoic era, in the Carboniferous period, in deltaic
conditions. The Millstone Grit Group is a formal stratigraphic term
for this sequence of rocks.
ESCARPMENT
Usually escarpment is used interchangeably with scarp (from the
Italian scarpa, shoe. But some sources differentiate the two terms,
where escarpment refers to the margin between two landforms, while
scarp is synonymous with a cliff or steep slope. The surface of the
steep slope is called a scarp face. Scarps are generally formed by
one of two processes: either by differential erosion of sedimentary
rocks, or by vertical movement of the Earth's crust along a fault
(faulting).
Schematic cross section of a cuesta, dip slopes facing left, and
harder rocklayers in darker colors than softer ones. Most commonly,
an escarpment is a transition from one series of sedimentary rocks
to another series of a different age and composition. When
sedimentary beds are tilted and exposed to the surface, erosion and
weathering may occur differentially based on the composition. Less
resistant rocks will erode faster, retreating until the point they
are overlain by more resistant rock (see cross section schematic).
When the dip of the bedding is gentle, a cuesta is formed. Steeper
dips (greater than 30-40°) form hogbacks.
Escarpments are also frequently formed by faults. When a fault
displaces the ground surface so that one side is higher than the
other, a fault scarp is created. This can occur in dip-slip faults,
or when a strike-slip fault brings a piece of high ground adjacent
to an area of lower ground. More loosely, the term scarp describes
the zone between coastal lowlands and continental plateaus which
have a marked, abrupt change in elevation caused by coastal erosion
at the base of the plateau.
Earth is not the only planet where escarpments occur. They are
believed to occur on other planets when the crust contracts, as a
result of cooling. On other Solar System bodies such as Mercury,
Mars, and the Moon, the Latin term rupes is used for an
escarpment.
Parking can be obtained at N53*09.370 W001*59.699 which is near
to the start of the PF which takes you on to the Escarpment
To log the cache please answer the following questions
1- From the summit you will see many unusual shaped rock's
explain how these were formed.
.
2-Describe the texture of the Gritstone and tell me why this
would be popular with climber's
A photo of the escarpment would be nice
Source Wikipedia