Friars, Donkeys, and Biomes

On Saturday 26th March, Bill left Harrowbarrow at 7 am for Ireland. Every spring, his University of Plymouth department takes 120 students and 12 faculty on a weeklong student research fieldtrip.  The day before he left, though, we went out for a pub lunch on Friday. This was the oldest pub yet: 12th century!

The Weary Friar is in the nearby village of Pillaton. As so often happens around here, we left the main road and drove down narrow, winding lanes lined with hedges for a couple miles, only to have the road open up into a thriving village. Here is Bill in front of the pub:

It looks deserted in the photo, but it actually had a big lunch crowd inside.  I tried something new--breaded whitebait--which looks just like friend minnows!  They are actually little fish (2 inches long) that you eat whole:  bones, eyes and all! I tried not to think about the eyes part, although Bill did point out that one was looking at me through its breading. They were tasty, but I don't know that I'd order them again.

I decided to make the most of the two weekends I had alone with Rebecca and Gwendolyn.  On Saturday, I took them and two of Rebecca's school friends to a very local attraction:  The Tamar Valley Donkey Park (http://www.donkeypark.com/index.php). Here is Gwendolyn at the entrance:

And here are Sophie and Rebecca, waiting for Aine to arrive.

The Donkey Park is actually a donkey sanctuary for retired donkeys. It is owned by a local family who use admission fees to cover the costs of the donkeys' care. In addition to donkeys, there are also goats, rabbits, chickens, and guinea pigs for the families to see, pet, interact with, and even hold (guinea pigs)

and take on walks (donkeys). However, there is also an all-weather indoor play area filled with slides and enclosed jungle gym structures.

As you might have guessed, this is what captured the kids' attention. They played in this area for three of the four hours we were there.  Here are the big girls at the top of the "Drop Slide."

But guess who was actually the first to go down it?  Our daredevil Gwendolyn!

Eventually, Rebecca and Sophie got up the nerve to try it, and I even went down it--once.  Aine had been down it before but firmly and confidently declined this time. Rebecca and Sophie figured out a way to go down together--ending with flair!

When they weren't sliding, they were climbing around and playing hide and seek in pairs.  

I did manage to persuade them to go outside long enough to try out the trampolines

and the "adventure playground."



It was a very successful outing, and we followed it up with a stop at Harrowbarrow's Village Hall for a jumble sale and auction to benefit cancer research.  The girls loved the prices at the kids' table--10 pence an item--and had a good time doing a little "shopping."  I even managed to find a few treasures, including a small watercolor print of York Minster.  Many in the community had come out to support the event, and the girls continued their play in the adjacent playground while I had a cup of tea with friends. 

The next day I decided we would go back to the Eden Project to see--you guessed it--the daffodils!  Eden has a large outdoor area full of local plants and flowers planted in creative and beautiful arrangements.  We had a bit of a challenge getting there, due to road construction and a detour, but the girls were patient with me (I was without a navigator in the passenger seat, so we had to stop frequently to figure out an alternative way to get there) and we eventually made it.  I was having fun using the iTouch camera to take pictures, especially of the girls and the flowers.  Here are my favorite girls at the entrance:

And here they are again in an area planted with trees, daffodils, and hyacinths:

There were mass plantings of daffodils everywhere, such as these hillside ones

and these.

There were wonderful areas for children outside, such as these little paths made of bent willow

and this climbing structure.

We spent a little time in the Core this trip, which is Eden's educational centre. Rebecca loved their "refrigerator wall" designed to allow visitors to express themselves.

But here's my favorite one of the sisters from that day:

Goodbye Spring, Hello Summer!

The girls started Easter Break on April 8 and won't begin Summer Term until April 26. We're using this break as our summer vacation as the girls will be in school after this until the end of July! We went to France last week (look for a blog on that soon!), and will tour around Devon and Cornwall with Bill's brother, Kevin, and his wife, Michelle, next week.

The Spring Term ended with a big show for the parents and families of the students. The entire school, from Reception through Year 6, took part in the festivities in the covered playground. It was a beautiful day. The theme for the last term was Cornwall and everything Cornish. The event was meant to display some of the things about Cornwall that the kids had learned. The whole school started off singing a Cornish song together. Then Gwen's class did a Cornish dance. Rebecca's class did a 10-minute history of Cornwall, and Rebecca also did a traditional dance with her dance group. The show ended up with the unveiling of a new tiled sign that Rebecca helped to make commemorating their term spent learning about Cornwall. The sign includes the sun, because it is always sunny in Cornwall, an image of Kit Hill, the large hill that overlooks the area, the Cornish flag, and the school bell that is the symbol of Harrowbarrow School. A'Gas Dynergh is Cornish for "Welcome."

As the weather warms, the uniforms change their look for the Summer Term. The girls are now wearing light blue and white gingham dresses with their jumpers or cardigans. No more tights!

Finally, a parting shot of the final daffodils of the season. Enjoy!

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.