Church Micro 9322...Capel-y-Ffin - Baptist EarthCache
Church Micro 9322...Capel-y-Ffin - Baptist
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(other)
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On the other side of the River Honddu from St Mary's is this Baptist Chapel, built in 1737.
It is similar in size to St Mary's and is also whitewashed. The chapel is only open to the public on Christmas Day, with the exception of burials.
This Earthcache focuses on the weathering of the headstones in the graveyard of Capel-y-Ffin Baptist Chapel.
The headstones at this church vary in stone types- from the original ones made of limestone/sandstone combinations up to the more modern ones made of granite. However, no headstone is safe from the destructive powers of weathering/erosion: Weathering is the breakdown of rocks and minerals. Erosion is weathering, but with the material removed though water, air or gravity.
There are three main types of weathering:
• Physical/Mechanical: Temperature changes causes rocks to break apart. The most common cause is freeze-thaw, whereby water in small cracks in the rock freeze and expand, breaking up the rock.
• Biological: Organisms such as algae/lichens produce chemicals which disintegrate the rocks. Some tiny animals also bore into rocks to protect themselves.
• Chemical: Acidic rainwater dissolves rocks (particularly limestone) which then erodes. This is worsened in areas of high pollution, as emitted gases react with rain, which make it even more acidic.
To 'find' this Earthcache, please email me the answers to the tasks below within a reasonable amount of time of completion. If you do not email, do not complete all tasks, or have the answers drastically wrong, then with all Earthcaches, I will have to delete your log.
1) Visit the headstones at each of the waypoints (to confirm you've got the correct one, the first initial and surname are given) and rate each headstone on a scale of one to ten, where 1 is least weathered, 10 is most. In your email, order them from most to least weathered and your reasons why
Think about the following to rate them: are the names readable and any stone artwork still in original shape? Is the headstone still its original shape? Has it changed colour?
2) Which of the three weathering processes (as listed above) do you think cause the most damage to the headstones here and why?
3) *To prove you visited* Look at the plaque on the front of the church. It mentions a George- what is his surname?
4) A non-answer-revealing photo of you at the Earthcache site (preferably one of your GPS and the church in the same photo) would be nice to see, but not compulsory.
Terrain is 2* due to the fact that the graveyard lies on a grassy incline.
Please try to approach the graves from the side rather than the front, as not to stand on the graves.
As part of the 13th International Earthcache Day (Oct 2015) I challenged myself to place an Earthcache every month until Earthcache day 2016, kicking it off with GC62T8F. This Earthcache is number 6 in that challenge (March 2016).
Additional Hints
(No hints available.)