After a lovely and most rewarding day exploring Martley’s two new geology trails (3 and 5.8 miles) on Saturday 8th, following sent to the participants. We had not advertised this locally, with posters and fliers, but only via the official GeoFest ‘what’s on’ leaflet (see here) so most of our 28 visitors on Saturday were from outside the area.
Thank you all so much for visiting Martley yesterday-we could not have been blessed with better weather, simply gorgeous.
Thank you particularly to Ian and Pam (Pennell) for opening their unique garden at Scar Cottage a Geo Champions Site, to all of us for refreshments–the general consensus was that you should open a permanent cafe, Ian and Pam, it would do very well indeed. Thank you to Brenda (Owen-Jones my next door neighbour) for making and donating the exquisite cakes, to Ian again for clearing paths on the Nubbins and for the work at Martley Rock site, to farmer Richard Bray for allowing us to tramp unhindered over his ground to view The Nubbins, to Mike Preston (and Val) for exceptional explanations of the rocks and scenery around us (and for printing some leaflets), and also to Tim Carter and Alan (from London) whose geological knowledge contributed so much. Then there were Derek, Vanda and Eve with archaeological snippets–super, everyone contributed to the whole experience.
TVGS hope you enjoyed the day and very pleased that you thought our new maps by the weighbridge were very much worth the effort!
Thanks too of course to the Herefordshire and Worcestershire Earth Heritage Trust (and Natalie Watkins in particular) for the outstanding trail guides and to Julie for the Martley audit
I will gather some pictures and put them on the web site as soon as I can
All the best and remember the TVGS programme of events, field trips in the summer, top quality speakers in the winter–see web site for details,and here are a few replies, some contributing photos:
John (from June & John Edwards)
You’ve thanked everybody else, we would like to thank you for organizing the two walks. We felt the first walk was a bit more than “a stroll” but immensely satisfying and very informative about our local geology. You must have put in a vast amount of work and organization to prepare the route and the guide maps. Well done and thank you.
Dear John (from Melanie)–The walk around the Martley geology was superb. Thank you very much for a very informative and interesting walk. I am enclosing a couple of pictures – taken on Saturday during the walk. I hope to join the group on the visit to Dudley in July.
Hi John, (from Derek Hurst Archaeologist with Worc CC, who talks about Martley being the centre for Iron Age mudstone pottery making–but where??))
Thanks for leading the walk yesterday – time well spent and the cakes were a pleasant surprise.
I might now review the evidence a bit more as to why that ‘mudstone-gritted’ Iron Age pottery is always given a provenance in the area of Martley, and probably come back to you again about that subject from the geology point of view. Though given the geological variability of the Martley area perhaps Martley is a good bet if we are not sure! – though I would rather have better grounds than that.
If you were interested you can see a bit more about that pottery at the following link though it doesn’t really give you a full impression of the pottery fabric per se – http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue28/hurst_index.html and for the pottery http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue28/3/4.2.html#4.2.3
Hi. (from Eve Fraser–leading light in Wichenford Local History group) Many thanks for a lovely walk – hope your afternoon walkers were quicker than we were! Can you pass on our thanks to Mike? and his wife for their patience in giving us a beginner’s lesson in geology. Also, from conversations, I got the impression that they were interested in visiting gardens and meant to tell them about http://wichenfordopengardens.webplus.net/. could you pass the info on please.
Overheard lots of complementary comments about your display boards, especially the ones in the village centre which, hopefully, will encourage more walkers – well done.
Both my memory sticks are out on loan at the moment but I’ve asked for them to be returned and when they are I’ll let you have the file of photos from the Church exhibition.
Thank you for your informative and kind replies, really looking forward to the next walk on 10th August–John, here are a few pictures:–