Hallaton and Neville Holt, 25th May 2014

Thanks to Gordon for the following photographs.
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Grantham Canal, 21st May 2014

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Cotgrave Country Park and Grantham Canal, 18th May 2014

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Beacon Hill and Bradgate Park, 11th May 2014

Sorry if you have heard this tale before but ....

Bradgate Park is famous for its geology having probably the oldest rocks in England. Some of them are Precambrian i.e. older than the Cambrian Period which started about 540 million years ago. Now until the late 1950s the accepted scientific view was that life did not emerge until the Cambrian period. The so-called Cambrian Explosion was the period in which most major animal phyla appeared. However, on a trip to the park in 1956, a young Leicestershire schoolgirl Tina Batty found what she though was a fossil in a Precambrian rock face and told her geography teacher. "What have I told you" he said, "Precambrian rocks do not have fossils. Go to the bottom of the class". Then, the following year, a young lad Roger Mason saw what looked like marks on the same rock surface which, cutting a long story short, were identified as a fossil and this was subsequently named Charnia masoni. 

Roger Mason went on to become a Professor of Geoscience. As for Tina – who knows! 

Six of one, half a dozen of the other

A taste of things to come - Teesdale in September 2014

More information on the Weekend Away will be available later in May.  In the meantime .....

On the Pennine Way

Middleton in Teesdale

Low Force

Upper Teesdale

Tees Railway Path

Collingham, the Trent and Besthorpe Lagoons, May 4th 2014

The start of the walk, The Green at Collingham

Cromwell Weir by the side of the lock is one of the largest (and most dangerous) weirs on the Trent and marks the tidal limit of the river.

The wall of North Collingham Church, facing Carlton Ferry Lane, has marker stones let into its structure recording heights and dates of various notable flood events. These go back as far as February 1795 when one such flood was so severe that the river gave up its course for a while and flowed through a low piece of ground, between Newark and Stapleford, into the River Witham and retook its old route (pre ice age) to the sea at Boston on the Wash.  Later floods have been less severe due to the building of flood defences.

Even more interesting than the birds is the history of the Trent Valley gravel pits.

And at the end of the walk, even more interesting bird life.