Date planned, changed, date planned, changed, date planned–maintained.  Lucky us, 3rd January 2013, third time lucky, was dry, unlike the other dates scheduled for temporary trenching at Martley Rock.  A whole day with a digger to dig wherever we wanted.  Good old (not really old) Tom, delving deeply into the stubbled field, building hills of multi-coloured earths, a rainbow of deposits, ranging over hundreds of millions of years. At times there were twelve of us on site, at others none were on view, were we all really on our haunches down in the trenches close quartering this treasure?  Certainly Nat disappeared

Well exactly WHAT was discovered today?  The geologists will report in due course (which may be quite a long time), but eavesdropping round the edges I heard of and saw much Cambrian Quartzite in unexpected places, a large reef of Carboniferous Sandstone–first time we have confirmed it on site-in one trench cutting in two the cambrian deposits, black powder oh so nearly coal and a wonderful view of the divide between Etruria Formation (Carboniferous) and Triassic–site of the East Malvern Fault, marked by a band of leached (beige rather than red) sandstone in the fault zone.

Thank you so much to Rob and Helen of Cob House Fisheries, landowner, and Richard Bray, most accommodating and long suffering land user, for a memorable day in good weather.