Starting Anglesey geology in Rhoscolyn

When the new academic year starts, we tend to not wait very long until we take the first year students who are doing the Anglesey geology field course into the field. Normally we start in the Precambrian and work our way towards the present day, but that requires starting on Llanddwyn, and if the tide is against you that trip becomes problematic. And the tide was against us. So we need to start somewhere else, and we decided on Rhoscolyn. They are the rock is all Cambrian, so the next best thing.

We went on the second Monday of term, and over the weekend, I received a message from my colleague Dei, who is the module organiser, saying that he was unwell and probably couldn't make the trip. But that's okay; Jaco and I can do what he does. Within limits.

On the day I travelled up in the coach with the students, and we met Jaco by our first stop: South Stack. And we took it from there!

Jaco had actually not been back from sick leave for very long himself, but this whole trip is all about turbidites, and he built an entire blossoming career on the things. He never ceases to stop to have anything to say about that!

I did the general introduction so I would have some input. And then I let Jaco go wild on his turbidites. By the time he was done it was pretty much lunchtime!

South Stack lighthouse 

We drove to Rhoscolyn and had lunch by the church. Then we walked to the coast watch outlook post. There I said some more about the stratigraphy of the area, and Jaco mentioned Dennis Wood, who has a memorial stone there. And then we went down to the cliff to look at more turbidites. 

Impressive cliff

From that cliff face we walked to a last one. That has a big quartzite lump exposed; how did that get there? And from there we normally walk the scenic route back, past some rock arches, but it had started raining, so we decided to skip that and go back to the vehicle. I think we made the right call; I didn't stop raining for a long time after that. So we just went home! And reported back to Dei that we thought we had delivered a successful day in the field. He was glad to hear it.

Let's hope next time we can actually go to the Precambrian! Although I haven't checked the tides yet…