We all love to find a rock when walking in a park or gardens and this is a cracker.
The Millennium gardens were created well before 2000 but were in fact ‘upgraded’ to the current state to commemorate the start of the third thousand years on our calendar.
The stone cross that you find at the entrance (and the GPS position given) was in fact designed and carved by the aptly named local artist called Kevin Blockley. It was erected and dedicated to Cytun to mark the religious significance of the site to local ecumenical Christian churches of Wales, in 1999 .
Earth cache lesson
This stone is probably not carved from local stone, since most of the stone found locally is of a different type, (doh). This is supported by the number of local houses made from slabs stacked on top of each other; you can see these types of houses very close by.
Here are two descriptions of stone types.
Sandstone
There are outcrops of sandstone in Wales but not much locally. This type of stone is made as animals and small rock particles fall to the bottom of the ocean. It can be coarse grain, where the particles are as big as grains of rice (and sometimes bigger) to very fine mudstones, where the particles are microscopic and can’t actually be seen with the naked eye. Sandstone can be a variety of colours depending on the percentage of animal material is included and the type of rock that has contributed to the particles. Most sandstone is yellow in colour but it can be reddish and of a grey hue too. One confusing aspect of sandstone is that, as it is left out in the open, it all tends to go a greyish dirty colour, this is due to pollution. In the mid part of the 20th Century most sandstone in industrial areas was black due to the amount of soot in the air from coal fires. Today most pollution is from motor vehicles and this turns sandstone the greyish colour. This type of stone is very commonly used to sculptures and standing stones because of its resistance to weather and its ability to ‘hold’ a carved shape for many years.
Slate
A local material used for building local houses and roofing all around the world. This is grey/green in colour and made up of very thin layers of stone. Originally when it was laid down it would have been a mudstone of very fine texture with very few or no visible particles in it. Over time it has had pressure exerted on it, probably by the movement of the earth around it. This pressure has caused all the small particles to be almost liquefied and when it cooled, it has formed very thin layers. These layers are what gives slate its splitting ability and gives its very good linear strength. Slate is very poor for carving and although it can be etched, it is rarely used for large sculptures because water ingress down the cracks can lead to large splits which would destroy a large sculpture.
Questions
In order to claim this cache you need to have visited the site and answer the following questions. Please do not damage the stone to determine its colour, read the descriptions above in full.
1)What type of stone do you think it is, (choose from the two above)?
2)What is the texture of the parts of the stone that is not carved?
3)What animal is carved onto the reverse of the cross?
Finally some maths
Information
This type of stone typically weighs about 2500kg per cubic meter.
About 15% of the stone is underground
4) What would you estimate the weight of this stone to be (including the underground part)?
Finally, finally
Please upload a photo of yourself, your GSP or something interesting in the garden, (this part -as always- is optional)
Thanks for visiting Llany and I hope you enjoyed the lesson and the cache