Bedding Planes EarthCache

Carboniferous limestone is a sedimentary rock made of calcium carbonate. It is dgenerally 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 mud. Fossil corals, brachiopods and crinoids (prehistoric marine animals) 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 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.

This earthcache location demonstrates some very pronounced bedding planes within a large slab of limestone to the side of the small river. If you look across the river you will see a small  waterfall cutting its way through the limestone slab. The most pronounced feature is the angle of the bedding planes. These lines run almost perfectly parallel throughout the whole feature. Some have been widened and distorted by the process of erosion.

In order to log this earthcache please perform the following tasks:

1) Estimate the height of the feature.
2) At what angle do the bedding planes run to the earth?
You can do this by placing a protractor on the fence and estimating.
3) What sort of texture does limestone have?

Pictures are appreciated however not required.

Please email your answers through my geocaching profile. I do receive a lot of earthcache emails per day. You don't need to wait for confirmation from me to log the cache. It helps me a lot if you log the Earthcache first; then email me the answers.