I visited Brian today and we had a little wander up Dowgang Hush at Nenthead. We only did, maybe a mile and a half, but with 400 feet of ascent and lots of poking around.
Roughly at the top of one of the branches of the hush are the remains of an old coal mine.
I noticed that the coal mine shop or, maybe it was an office or a workshop (it has a fireplace) was covered in bright orange lichen. I’ve not seen this before. Any lichen experts out there?
Secondly, Brian was turning over bits of the spoil heap, which was mainly lumps of shale, when he announced that he’d found a fossil. On closer inspection, the spoil heap was, in fact littered with oval-shaped rocks with ripples down the side. These were fossilised trees. The ripples are, or were the bark and these things were just a bit thicker than sapling size. I took a photo. In fact, I took a fossil. Its about ten inches long by two or three inches wide and weighs about four kg. That’s the wife’s Christmas present sorted out anyway.
What?
Look, it’s 350 million years old…..
We returned by a different route and only slightly disturbed the couple of kids camped by the pond near the mine.
Aren’t the kids supposed to be at school just now?
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2 comments:
I think that it is a school, recently opened under the new austerity version of 'bulding schools for the future'.
That fossil will make an excellent door stop, conversation piece, paper weight, trebuchet ammo....it's multifunctional - are you over-egging the pudding a bit here on the Christmas present front - you'll make the rest of us look bad!
Well, she wanted something that would last. I mean 350 million years and still in superb condition....
Hopefully, it'll be a nice surprise on Christmas day. certainly, I'm hoping for a better reception than last year's artistic flower arrangement. They looked so untidy tied to that lampost so I was doing the council a favour as well.....
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