Field Trip to Western Ireland

Before we came to Cornwall, my colleague, Roland, and I submitted a research proposal to the University of Plymouth's Marine Institute. Although it was primarily a research proposal, we also included some teaching duties including classroom lectures and assistance with field trips. We were successful with the proposal, and as a result I have been involved in a bit of teaching while in Plymouth. I gave a two-hour lecture to a third-year hydrology class about my stream research in Boone Creek (can you imagine listening to me go on about geology for two hours? I'm sure that some of you can!), and also assisted Roland and another Dutch colleague, Gerd Masselink, on a field trip to Start Bay in Devon. This trip included a stop at my field site in Hallsands. Here's a picture from that trip with the Start Bay Lighthouse in the background and fantastic geology everywhere.

The other major teaching duty was to assist with the School's annual western Ireland field trip, which I returned from on April 3 (Mothering Sunday in England!). When I say field trip, I mean field trip! It was a nine day excursion, including travel days, and we took 120 students, 12 faculty, and three technicians on four coaches, two minibuses, and a van loaded with equipment. We travelled through southwest England and southern Wales to the port of Fishguard, where we boarded a ferry for the four-hour crossing to Rosslare, Ireland. From there it was another four-hour drive across Ireland to Lisdoonvarna, County Clare. Lisdoonvarna is on the western coast of Ireland, near Galway and the Aran Islands, and is approximately due west of Dublin, but on the opposite coast.

I was amused that we were staying in Lisdoonvarna because the contra dance band that I play in, Dot-dot-dash, has for years played an Irish jig called The Road to Lisdoonvarna, and here I was spending a week there. We basically took over The Imperial Hotel, a hotel that the University of Plymouth field trip has been staying at for 20 years.

The hotel staff were well prepared for our group. All meals were provided, including sack lunches to take into the field. The hotel consists of all of the buildings in the photo above, with some of the rooms in the upstairs of the blue and maroon buildings. The Matchmaker Bar was really just the hotel bar. It is named after the big matchmaking festival that occurs in Lisdoonvarna every September. The pub was closed during the day and the students were able to set up on the large tables in there to work on their projects. There were several other meeting rooms in the downstairs of the hotel that were also made available for the students. It seemed that the staff really looked forward to having our group arrive - being a tourist town, this out-of-season boost to the local economy is an important annual event, especially since the Celtic Tiger has evolved into the Celtic Housecat.

Here are some other views of Lisdoonvarna, which is essentially just a two-street town. Below Roland is modeling the main road that has our hotel, a coffee house, a Gaelic sports center (the Gaelic sports being hurling, which I saw on TV, and Gaelic football, which I got to see on the field across from the hotel), and several gift shops.

The town also has a square with statues of dancers and musicians,

and several pubs including the Irish Arms (militantly Republican, including a CD of the top 20 Irish rebel songs and a tribute to the Glasgow Celtic Football Club on the wall),

Nellie's Bar, where I went to hear some Irish music by a band of teenagers, none of whom knew The Road to Lisdoonvarna,

and the best pub in town, The Roadside Tavern.

The landlord of this pub, Peter Curtin, was an amazing guy. Roland and I headed down there before dinner each evening just to talk to him. He could speak about anything. Peter founded the Curtin family's reunion, which has been held in Ireland and the US, and recently founded the Burren Tolkien Society - he is convinced that the setting for Middle Earth in JRR Tolkien's books is The Burren. Apparently, JRR Tolkien used to be an external examiner for the English Department at the University of Galway, not far from The Burren. Peter found out that I'm a hydrogeologist and asked me hydro questions about The Burren for about 30 minutes. It was great fun. He and his wife also own the Burren Smokehouse, where they make some amazing smoked salmon.

I heard music in The Roadside Tavern on three nights. Two of these nights were small, traditional sessions with about three musicians playing fiddles, squeezeboxes, and an octave mandolin. The third night was a singer/songwriter from Colorado of all places, Annie Brooks, who was traveling around Ireland for a couple of weeks playing in various venues. She played in Lenoir, NC, just down the mountain from Blowing Rock, last year. Her music sounded familiar - I think that I've heard it on our public radio station, WNCW.

In addition to taking over the hotel, and the town, we also utilized the Spa Center just down the road. Lisdoonvarna originally began as a tourist town because of its mineral waters. Here is a picture of the Spa Center grounds, built beginning about 100 years ago to take advantage of some sulfur-rich springs that feed the stream running through the grounds. It reminded me of small spa towns that you see in the western Appalachians, like Hot Springs, NC, Warm Springs, VA, and White Sulfur Springs, WV. Our building is the one to the left, behind the trees.

Our three excellent technicians, Kevin, Richard, and Tim, set up a computer lab on one floor of the building,

a chemistry lab for analyzing water samples, and a microscopy lab for analyzing cores (in the back of the picture).

We spent the week looking primarily at the geology of The Burren, the famous limestone-covered region of western Ireland. In spots it looks like something that you would see in Utah - not the idyllic green that one would associate with Ireland. Here's what it looks like inland

and on the coast. Notice the huge boulders in the picture. This coastline faces the Atlantic Ocean and they get some very large waves that can toss three-meter-long boulders up onto the shore.

The field trip had an interesting setup. The first two days involved faculty-led field trips to explore the local geology, followed by two days of faculty-led field projects, and finishing with two days of student-led research projects. The students used the temporary laboratory facilities for analyzing data from their group projects and staff-led projects.

I spent my first two days assisting with faculty-led field trips. The first day we walked through the western Burren, encountering a lot of limestone and a few relics from Neolithic and the 19th Century. Here I am standing in front of some of that ubiquitous limestone. The rocks showed an amazing consistency in fracturing. In fact, you could probably walk around this area without a compass and not get lost.

The fractures were enlarged because limestone is a rock that dissolves. These solution-enlarged fractures, or grikes, were quite deep as well, some as deep as two meters. The fractures in the picture below are about the width of a foot. You are definitely on ankle-break alert when walking through this area!

We ended the day walking down into one of the few river valleys in the area, and then proceeding to the beach. The valley that we walked through used to be a lake when it was dammed by a glacial deposit. The stream now cuts through this material, which geologists call till - notice the large limestone boulders in it.

Day 2's field trip was to the same general area, but we walked from a boulder-strewn storm beach, up the limestone hills, and over the road to Lisdoonvarna. We started at a storm beach, one of many that pepper the coast of western Ireland. The boulders were huge - the storms that move these rocks must be enormous.

We proceeded up Slieve Elva, the highest point in The Burren. The views were excellent and the skies were clear. At several locations, including below, we were able to see a Neolithic ring fort. There were at least five of them along this particular hike.

On our return down the back side of the mountain, we found several extremely deep sinkholes. They were amazing features, with disappearing waterfalls and seemingly bottomless depths, but unfortunately they were not photogenic. We finished the day with a disappearing/reappearing stream along a limestone-shale contact. The porous limestone, as seen in previous pictures, allows the stream to sink into the ground. Those of you in southwestern Virginia are familiar with this type of stream. Here are some students walking on the dry streambed. The picture is looking upstream.

Just downstream of this picture, the limestone is overlain by shale, which forms the cliff in the next picture. There were some nice fossils in this shale, and I was able to help the students identify them.

Just downstream of this location, the stream once again comes to the surface. This picture is looking upstream.

On Days 3 and 4 I assisted my colleague Roland on a faculty-led mini research project. We went to some limestone lakes next to the coast that are unique to Ireland. They are known as turloughs ("turlocks"), are typically seasonal, and these particular lakes were tidal because of the connection between the lake and Galway Bay through the limestone. Here is the field site.

The students collected cores of the sediment of the marsh and reconstructed the history of the lake. Here is what a core looks like.

It was a very busy, and tiring, week, but I was happy for the opportunity to visit Ireland. I hope to take some ASU students to this area some time in the future. The rest of the pictures are some other highlights of the trip. One highlight was that I was able to see a few more holy wells in Ireland. I saw this one on the first day's field trip. Notice the items, pictures and trinkets, that have been left on a sill within the well itself. Interestingly, this well lies at the limestone-shale contact!

There was another Holy Well along the road going around Black Head, just off of Galway Bay. This one is much more elaborate outside but rather barren inside. No trinkets. 

The dissolution of the limestone led to some rather artsy rocks, too. Here is my favorite - someone obviously had to stand it up like that.

Other locations showed completely random fracturing including an x-shaped fracture

and another location where the fracture stopped and then restarted. 

I'll leave you with a picture taken from the top of Corkscrew Hill looking north to Galway Bay.