Sparkie's Junkyard » Geology

Lanzarote photos part 1

Sparkie — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 19:41:21 +0000

Settle to Malham

Sparkie — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 22:40:02 +0000

A weekend hike in the Yorkshire Dales, finishing at the beautiful limestone pavement and totally-unexpected cliffs of Malham Cove.

PS: here is my route

Swiss Panoramae

Sparkie — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 21:38:23 +0000

Belatedly, as ever, here are some panoramas from Switzerland. Despite the best efforts of the Swiss government to force the exchange rates towards something vaguely normal, things remained ridiculously expensive all week. Luckily our apartment had a cooker so we made tonnes of pasta to avoid the restaurants, and drank the French wine I had brought along from the week before, but the Schweizerische Bundesbahnen now have a lot of my money.

Montpellier

Sparkie — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 11:23:53 +0000

Scientific conferences: everyone thinks they’re just glorified booze-ups but more often than not you spend nine or ten hours a day sitting in stuffy rooms in a concrete box located in an industrial complex in the suburbs of a city you would never have visited if you had the choice. Luckily I spent last week in Montpellier, where they have beaches, sunshine and 30C. Yet somehow I still managed to spend nine or ten hours a day being bored, confused or, occasionally, inspired. Now Last week was the Euromat conference, during which I pretended to be a materials scientist and learned about composites, hip replacements, solar cells, railway line degradation and hundreds of talks about carbon nanotubes. This week, I’m doing it all again. Geology replaces materials, but the rain of Switzerland replaces the French sunshine. More on this later, once the freezing cold and shocking prices have properly kicked in.

In the mean time, here are some photos from Montpellier.

Prague

Sparkie — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 21:05:17 +0000

A weekend break after the Goldschmidt conference allowed for some gentle sightseeing. Whilst you can charge round most of the city in two days, we took a leisurely four and had a great time, recommended.

Spain fieldwork

Sparkie — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 10:23:16 +0000

Last week I popped over to the Pyrenees to collect some samples. Although the photographs might suggest otherwise, I worked hard – drilling about 35 kg of mountainside into 100 little plastic bags. Northern Spain at this time of year is also unfortunately photogenic, which was a real shame. As was the hot weather and unbroken sunshine, which luckily has replicated itself ten degrees further north this week. We started in the pretty town of Ainsa, headed east to the more industrial Tremp, before heading back to Zaragoza at the end of the week. Our little hire car covered the 1000+ km admirably, even when the road became a track, and the the track became a pile of gravel laid up a hill. That little detour (of many) might not have been the quickest way between sample locations, but it was certainly the more scenic.

The biggest problem turned out to be mealtimes. Good luck finding a restaurant before 10.15pm in Zaragoza. Or after 10.30 – the tables filled very quickly. The food was good though, if a little vegetable-free. If you order the sausages for main course, that’s pretty much what you get. Despite plenty of vegetables available in the towns, restaurants erred towards the meat-fest end of gastronomy. For the first time I was happy when my tactic of “choose something that you can’t translate” turned into a plate of beans. Although, being Spain, there was a generous helping of bacon thrown over the top of them just in case I was missing out on my meat intake.

This is probably my last fieldwork for my PhD, but not a bad way to finish. Now I have 9 months to do all the work and write up…………..

Lenz

Sparkie — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 21:30:11 +0000

We had a group meeting last week, in Switzerland

Norfolk field trip (remix)

Sparkie — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 10:20:19 +0000

Four years after my visit as an undergrad, I returned to Burnham Ovary Staithe last weekend to demonstrate on the Norfolk field trip. I think I learned possibly more this time, especially having to teach as we went round. Due to the vast quantities of mud involved, I took my first digital camera with me, the venerable Fuji Finepix A340. It is still rubbish, the zoom is still broken and it’s restricted to only one setting, but it forced me to try and be creative with it. Looking back I’m not sure which set are better, though last time I did have the advantage that it wasn’t freezing cold and raining lots of the time – turns out cold, wet fingers are less keen to take pictures than warm muddy ones.

Mountain lodge

Sparkie — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 13:58:43 +0000

Moving away from the heat, tonight I’m staying in the countryside at a mountain lodge operated by the National Taiwan University. We had a beautiful (unfortunately camera-free) sunset, followed by some fantastic food:

Earlier in the day however, we were slightly hotter. Niels and I were sampling in a river valley in the full sun, at 34 degrees and near 100% humidity. I’m now drinking my sixth litre of water for today. Sampling from 10.00 until 4.30, we have managed to get 40-odd samples which should give me plenty to do back in Cambridge, and if the results are ok a chapter of my thesis. Sounds scary talking about that sort of thing, but it’s a reality I am having to face up to quite quickly.

Taroko Gorge

Sparkie — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 15:28:51 +0000

Today I went to Taroko Gorge, which was awesome. The weather was cooler and less humid than Taipei, although hiking was still tiring. We met up with a park ranger who has been conscientiously collecting samples for Niels for years, who took us to a fresh landslide which we spent several hours clambering over and sampling. Then I went for a walk up the gorge, and found this:

At the bottom are hot spring pools, the photo is taken from a rickety suspension bridge over the river.