Exploring the Great Welsh Sea Serpent

This is the tenth blog from my time in North Wales, dating from the 17 July 2013.

Standing on top of a large lump of limestone rock on the outskirts of the genteel Victorian seaside town of Llandudno, it was hard to imagine that the old Viking name for for the Great Orme means Sea Serpent, for all you see are the burnt grassy pastures and the masses of tourists thronging the slopes. Away from the honey pot at the top, and down below the first outcrops of rock, where the modern road now runs round this headland, the story was very different. Here, even though the summer had been hot and dry, there was still water dripping out of the flushes and through the rocks. Add to this the effects of differential erosion of the rock, to produce a distinctive patterned of layers formed of green vegetation mixed with layers of white and grey rocks, accompanied by the shape of the headland as seen from out at sea, and the thought that this could be a slavering Sea Serpent might not be so unbelievable.

The Great Orme – 17 July 2013 (Copyright Carol Jones)

Wandering along at this lower level, the edges are rich with species. Calcium rich flushes deposit areas of tufa as they flow over the rock surfaces, amongst which many lime green rosettes of the Common Butterwort are spattered, just like pustules on a teenagers face. Each of these rosettes are splattered with a good covering of flies, slowly being digested to provide nutrients for these plants that cling to the rock surface. Above which the purple flowers attract more insects for the requirements of reproduction, followed maybe by a bit of supper!!

Drier areas are green and grassy, especially where the soil depth is deeper, accompanied by an array of flowers through which flit a number of small blue butterflies, tempting and teasing by not sitting still. Now normally small rich blue butterflies are most likely to be just Common Blues, but maybe, just maybe, because we are on the Great Orme there might just have been a Silver Studded Blue amongst them. I only say this, because this was the Great Orme, where a distinctive sub-species of the Silver Studded Blue is found, but unfortunately all I could get to see clearly was the bright blue top of the wings, which when they hardly settled at all could easily have be either.

Amongst the drier areas where the soil was thinner and the vegetation generally much shorter and by now, after a number of weeks of hot, dry sunshine, were very much burnt off, there was one more surprise left to be found, in the form of the small prickly plants of the Carline Thistle. I love the Carline Thistle, as their inflorescences always reminds me of miniature Sunflower heads, that seem to point towards the sky and open and close with the weather. In dry conditions the straw-like bracts surrounding, the delicate yellow inner tubular florets open wide to soak up those rays and invite insect visitors to feed.

Carline Thistle – 17 July 2013 (Copyright Carol Jones)

Ripples in the Sand

This is the fifth blog from the my holiday in North Wales, dating from the 11 July 2013.

Standing looking out looking over Afon Mawddach in the early in the evening, with the tide out and the sun dropping lower in the sky, the view out over the estuary was totally amazing. The sun was just low enough to show up every undulation on the mud flats in front of us. Wow! What a sight, as the water had ebbed out of the estuary it had left the most fascinating patterns in the sand, and with the light low in the sky, the ripples showed up so clearly, with every minute detail clearly defined.

Afon Mawddach Estuary – 11 July 2013 (Copyright Carol Jones)

I’ve always been fascinated by the ripple patterns in the sand, wondering how the retreating water manages to drop particles in such precise patterns, and in this case, with patterns within patterns. Its as though an army of elves have been out arranging the sand in precise patterns, a particle here, a particle there. Smoothing out the rough and unformed, adding hummocks and hollows to order. I’ve also wonder what chance there is that these patterns last longer than the length that the tide is out. Will these be the ones that the geologists see in many millions of years when they examine the rocks formed under this estuary or will they just be here today and gone when the next wave passes over? Questions that will never be truly answered, though I suspect the patterns of tomorrow will look totally different. So those foot prints I left in the sand the day before, will have long since been been lost to the waves? But maybe, just maybe….

Ripples in the Sand – 11 July 2013 (Copyright Carol Jones)

Scars of Times Past

This is the second of three blog entries from last weekend – taken from Saturday 27 October 2012.

Being in a landscape that has been shaped by the work of ancient glaciers is amazing especially in autumn, when the sun is shining and very low in the sky, so that all the hummocks and hollows are accentuated. The Yorkshire Dales is the perfect place for this and last Saturday was also the perfect time, as the skies were clear, the was sun shining and the autumn colours were amazingly bright and warm, even if the temperature wasn’t.

The landscape around the Yorkshire Dales have been scraped and furrowed by the passing glaciers of the last ice age, around 300 million years ago, producing towering crags, shadowy peaks, limestone pavements and deep valleys. One of my favourite places to see the grating effects of the passing glaciers is at Yew Cogar Scar, where even when the light isn’t quite perfect, long scrape lines can be seen highlighted in the early afternoon shadows and grey patches of bare limestone rock. I’m never sure whether its the geology of this place that fascinates me or the remnant of the hanging Yew wood that clings precariously to the edges of the scar, away from the continuous nibbling of the local sheep. Those remaining Yew trees, make the occasional dark green blob, still fresh against the browning greens of the dying grasses.

Yew Cogar Scar – 27 October 2012 (Copyright Carol Jones)

Another, definately more impressive view is that of Pen-y-Ghent, sometimes known as the Sleeping Lion. Here unlike Yew Cogar Scar where the scar lines run along the valley. At Pen-y-Ghent the errosion lines run down the mountain. These erosion shadows highlight the layers of different rock types, and so throw new shadows outwards. Then to complete the contrasts of the mountain come a warm orange foreground of Purple Moor-grass, accompanied by the varying autumn greens of the surrounding grass moor.

Pen-y-Ghent – 27 October 2012 (Copyright Carol Jones)