as originally published in the Association of Earth Science Editors’ newsletter “Blueline”.
Geologists never seem to be out of their element—there are always rocks to study nearby.
For two-and-a-half weeks this past May and June, I took a vacation from my fledgling company for the first time, and my husband and I journeyed across the ocean to visit England and Wales. This trip fulfilled a 15-year dream of mine—to dig into my ancestry and see Wales, where my grandfather had come from.
Because we were on vacation, I didn’t think much about editing, deadlines, clients, and such, but I couldn’t stop being a geologist. Irrespective of where we were, there was always an interesting rock, a unique geologic feature, a rolling glacier-carved landscape to make me feel at home.
We arrived in London, where we spent a week as tourists in this great metropolis city. Being from Victoria, British Columbia, I’ve grown accustomed to the laid-back “island mentality” of Vancouver Island. London is definitely a faster pace of life. And despite being a big city with not too many outcrops to explore, the stone architecture was amazing, and I did find some beautiful porphyritic urns to admire in the British Museum.
From London, we took a train to Bristol, where we met up with my relatives. Having heard that I was a geologist, one of my relatives dug out his geologic maps of the United Kingdom, published by none other than the British Geological Survey. British geology is substantially different than that of the west coast of North America because the British rolling green hills are dominated by sedimentary rocks. Still, poring over those maps showed me that Britain does indeed have a few ribbons of gneissic rock and some igneous intrusions of its own.
These buildings in Bath are constructed from the famous oolitic limestone known as Bath Stone.
We also spent a day in Bath, which is slightly eerie because all the buildings are the same color! The city of Bath uses mostly a Jurassic oolitic limestone called Bath Stone for construction. The city itself is built on a naturally occurring hot spring (hence the famous Roman baths) and is in a sort of “bath-shaped” valley.
This circle of standing stones at Avebury is one of a series of concentric circles that form this lesser-known “henge.”
The relatives took us to Avebury, a “henge” lesser known than Stonehenge but similar in its strange orientations of large rocks that each weighed several tons. Avebury as three concentric circles of standing stones set on chalky bedrock. Avebury is generally constructed of sarsens, which are a kind of Eocene silicified sandstone. Sarsens appear in the construction of Stonehenge too, although it also contains bluestones that were from Bristol, we spent time in Cardiff and the rolling hills of the Welsh countryside before exploring the relatively untouristed backcountry areas of north Wales—cities with unpronounceable names, people who cherish their native Welsh language, and the red dragon of the Welsh flag flying above every castle. Castles were a defining feature of our trip to Wales. At Caernarfon, the castle where Prince Charles was invested as Prince of Wales, we saw where the stone has once supported wooden structures when the castle was built in the late 13th century. The stone is still there—there is no trace of the wood.
Irrespective of the concepts of “straight” and “level,” the Shambles in York is an interesting street to explore.
Our last stop before returning to London was York, a walled city that recently celebrated its 1,900th anniversary. Given the fact that British Columbia is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year, it’s hard to picture a city operating in the same place for 1,900 years!
York is definitely full of history, with its own castle, Viking museum and, of course, the Medieval wall. In addition, in shambles (originally a term for butcher shops) came from York’s street, the Shambles, where no building has even a self-consistent concept of “straight” and “level”—they’re almost falling into each other. That in itself is a little unnerving, but the Shambles is a wonderful place to watch homemade fudge being made on a marble slab. The marble, being naturally colder than the air temperature, helps to cool the liquid fudge so it can be formed into a loaf.
Going back home and seeing the Rocky Mountains and then the Coast Mountains from the plane, it’s nice to return to a younger, more familiar landscape. But wherever we travel next, I’m sure it will include even more geologic adventures.
