Fife Rocks! Series: Wormit Trio Letterbox Hybrid
allieballie: Archiving this series as issues arise
Fife Rocks! Series: Wormit Trio
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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This is the twelfth cache in a letterbox series inspired by the Geological Wall at St Andrews.
The Geological Wall contains 22 rocks collected from all over Fife. A leaflet created by the St Andrews Geological Heritage Project gives details of each rock, along with Ordnance Survey grid references of their source localities. Hopefully this series will end up taking cachers to each of these localities. It is my intention to hide the caches as close as possible to the grid references given in the leaflet - this may mean that the caches are not necessarily going to be hidden in scenic, historical or interesting places! The information about the rock given below has been adapted from the Geological Wall leaflet.
Wormit Shore contains three of the rocks found in the Geological Wall.
Vesicular Andesite occurs when lava erupts onto the surface of the earth and contains gas bubbles. When the lava solidifies, these bubbles may become filled with minerals.
Volcanic Conglomerate contains a mixture of fine and coarse grains, indicating that the rock formed in fast-flowing water which was capable of moving large cobbles. The cobbles were eroded from the vesicular andesite.
Highland Schist is the odd one out here - this rock did not form in Fife but was carried here by a glacier which moved from the Highlands down through the Tay valley. When the ice melted boulders of this rock would have fallen out here. It has many tight, crinkly bands in it which indicate that it is a metamorphic rock whose original form has been altered.
You will have to try and find these three rocks for yourself - once again it was difficult to pinpoint exactly which one was which in this location! I suspect that a great deal of the rock around the cache site may be volcanic conglomerate, judging by the presence of such a wide range of particle sizes within much of it. I am also unsure as to how common Highland Schist stones are around the shore here - you may be lucky enough to spot an example, or you may not!
You may wish to continue your walk further down the shore to investigate whether any of these rocks become more apparent further along! I chose to hide the cache in this particular location because it reminded me of the cache “Under Iron”!
Park in Bay Road at N56 25.532 W002 58.745. Immediately before you reach the arch of the Tay Rail Bridge there is a path which will take you down to the shore. I will leave you to work out how to get onto the beach from the bottom of the steps (note - small children will need help here!).
The above co-ordinates are probably meaningless! What is it with accuracy and these Fife Rocks! caches? Couldn’t get a reading of less than about 50ft at the cache location -no doubt the cliffs having a big effect here! For this reason, the following might help (if you are not local then you may have to do a bit of architectural research in advance!). The cache is near a large longish boulder which is aligned in a NE-SW direction. You will know if you have found the right boulder because if you stand in front of the NE end of it then you should see Dundees “Discovery Point” centre lying just over the horizontal span in the first metal support of the bridge.
Cache contains log book, pencil, sharpener, stamper and ink pad.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Orgjrra ebpxf whfg cnfg gur FJ raq bs gur ynetr obhyqre