Geology – From Pyrenees to Pennines

Brimham Rocks: a Wild Place, Once the Haunt of Druids

I have posted several times about Brimham Rocks – mainly about its function as a challenging and wonderful playground for the grandchildren. The other day, however, I went on my own, to explore its history.

In Victorian times, it was believed that the Druids were reponsible for carving many of the fantastical shapes dominating the landscape.

They weren’t. Blame geology instead. About 320 million years ago, this corner of the planet was dominated by an immense river, splitting into many deltas spilling over the land here, often changing course. As it travelled, it deposited layers and layers of sand and grit which over the millenia formed layers of rock we now call millstone grit. The area was eroded by water, by wind sand-blasting the rocks, by earth movements: and by the Ice Age, when – more than 10, 000 years ago – slow-moving glaciers sculpted and moved the rocks.

It’s easy to see the layers of sediment here which formed the millstone grit.

Earthquakes, millenia ago liquefied the rock, forcing boiling water upwards through the layers that had been laid down. You can see that phenomenon here.

There’s one particular rock, known as The Idol (because the Druids must have carved it!) Just look:

Can you see how this inmmense rock , all 200 tons of it, is supported on the tiniest of pillars? It’s quite safe – for now.

And here’s an oak tree in direct competition with another rock. It continues to grow and thrive, somehow, with a rock that declines to split any further and give it extra growing room.

All this is a rather long-winded way of saying that Brimham Rocks is the wildest place I know, and therefore a suitable candidate for Egidio’s Wild Lens-Artists Challenge

Stone

Millennia pass.
Continents collide.
Oceans swell, ebb, freeze.
Rocks accrete…                                                         

..and, in England, form
its nubbly spine: the Pennines.

Men gathered scattered stones -
erected walls, marching across dales, hills, moors
holding fast the sheep or meadowland.                         

These stony barricades are the landscape -
like the rocks from which they came.

For Rebecca of Fake Flamenco’s November Poetry Challenge: Stone.

It’s a worm’s life

Recently, I’ve started to follow a few poetry blogs, and last week, David of The Skeptic’s Kaddish, accepted a challenge: to write a Quatern.

A what? This …

Not just any old quatern however. This one has to contain the word ‘quiet’. I thought I’d have a go too. It happens that this fits quite nicely into my self-imposed challenge, set as I looked yet again at my geological map of Great Britain. What’s it like for worms? Some of them contend with sandy soil, others heavy clay. Some soil is chalky, some loamy, and what must soil up in the old coalfields be like? Or that thin acid soil of the moorlands?

I’ve written a gaggle of poems about worms, each one living in a different kind of soil: I obviously don’t get out enough. Each poem uses a different verse form. So why not sum the whole worm thing up in a quatern?

Quiet - can you hear a sound? 
The barley rustles in the breeze. 
A buzzard mewls, the crows confer, 
The rabbits waken.  Dusk descends. 

Below the ground it’s different though - 
Quiet - can you hear a sound? 
There are no noises from the worms 
who turn the earth, eat leaves and chaff. 

Their world of darkness is not ours. 
They churn the soil by night and day. 
Quiet - can you hear a sound 
as worms keep soil in rude good health? 

There’s life above, there’s life below - 
each dependent on the other. 
Do not dismiss the lowly worm: 
quiet - can you hear a sound?