These blogs are written as a record of TVGS activities. That is important. I personally have absolutely no desire to reserve this space for myself, other contributors are most welcome. Having said that I also want to say what a journey this geology thing is becoming.  Who would have thought a few years ago, in 2010, after a dig at Martley Rock, that we would be drawn into a new pastime of endless fascination?  Who would have thought that this odyssey would take us to the Houses of Parliament, to France, to the Teme valley in company of academics, to listen, spell bound to great speakers, some even from our own community? Me?  You must be joking.  Many of us feel this way.  We often quip that our society only wheels out real geologists when we need them.  Believe me we so appreciate the time you freely give us, all of you. It is such a great privilege to learn about this science, to wonder at the life a pebble has led, to look at our landscape with new eyes, to start to interprete it, and to consider the unimaginable years that have passed to leave it in the brief state that we see now.

For us there are new adventures nearly every day, Monday (19th Jan 2015) the science of volcanoes, yesterday (22nd) extreme tufaring (my word) in the Teme Valley, tomorrow a meeting with an old man who can relate the story of the valley, of its quarries, occupants and history.  We are particularly keen to find out more about where the stone for Shelsey Walsh Church and the cottage nearby was quarried, what happened at Southstone, that great crag of tufa, perhaps the largest in the country with its sacred spring, vanished chapel and hermitage.

Our field scramble yesterday in the company of Professor Ian Fairchild and with Hannah Townley of Natural England, led us to parts of the west Teme jungle I doubt few have ever been.  A spider’s web of fallen trees, exposed roots, brambles, muddy slides, precipitous slopes, waterfalls, ferns and creepers.  Oh, and tufa!  The valley abounds in it.  These days largely covered in vegetation, except at grand Southstone or where a fallen tree lies, its net of roots upended to reveal the underlying rocks and earth, characteristically orange with tufa.  As I understand it, rain falls on the Bromyard plateau, dissolving particles of calcium carbonate found within the matrix of Devonian St Maughans formation, itself marked by varying deposits of Bishops Frome limestone, a fossilized soil or calcrete. This can be seen as a marked horizon all along the valley in the form of a layer of noduley limey lumps up to 3 m thick in places, usually well hidden with vegetation but appearing where, for example, small land slips occur.  At the impervious underlying Silurian Raglan mudstone contact, springs erupt, at Southstone gushingly so, saturated with dissolved carbonate, releasing carbon dioxide as the water reaches the surface.  Not much more of a prompt is needed–perhaps a drop down a slope, to pass a tipping point so that the saturated water starts to deposit its load of carbonate.  Particular varieties of moss like this water and grow abundantly, but one suspects briefly, to be encased in the lime, petrified on the spot.  This process seems to have continued since the last ice age though deposition rates, Ian said, must have declined. Dates from the base of the deposit are from around 7000 years ago. Southstone is a unique site, a site of great value and heritage with a social and recent geological history and should be conserved.  Here are a few pictures (by Mike Install). There will be more…..