Newgale peat beds

Brilliant photos of the peat bed exposures at Newgale keep on coming ---- I found these yesterday on Twitter!  Thought they were worth sharing.

Westdale Bay -- close to the Devensian ice edge?

These 3 photos are from Westdale Bay, not far from the mouth of Milford Haven and quite close to the village of Dale.  The deposits there are seriously confusing. 

If you look at the top photo, taken at least 50 years ago when I was young and innocent,  you can see clearly the banded nature of the sediments high in the sequence -- suggesting water deposition or maybe flowage of saturated sediments very close to an ice edge.

But the ice edge at the maximum extent of the Devensian wasn't here -- it was, according to my interpretation of the evidence, further to the east across the peninsula, where a wonderful kame terrace was once exposed in all its glory when gravel working was going on there.  This was at Mullock Bridge.  That having been said, at the base of the sequence there is certainly an excellent exposure of Irish Sea till, coloured reddish because the rocks hereabouts are ORS.  This layer is shown in the middle photo.

The bigger problem is associated with the lower photo, showing a deposit from higher in the sequence -- I thought at first that it showed a finer-grained till, but now I'm not sure.  It looks more like a soliflucted or rearranged till, composed mostly of rather angular fragments of locally derived sandstones.

Must get back there one day and have a look...... so little time, and so much to do...

Daily Mail in on the act.....

Thanks to Rob for drawing this earth-shattering news to my attention.  Now the Daily Mail is in on the act, with the headline:

Is Stonehenge just a gigantic xylophone? Researchers tap landmark's bluestones and record them 'singing'  

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2573459/Is-Stonehenge-just-gigantic-xylophone-Study-sound-rocks-make-hit-finds-bluestones-make-landmark-sing-struck.html

Royal College of Art researchers say that Preseli hills bluestones sound like no others tested from across the country
Sonic qualities may explain why prehistoric Britain's took them 200 miles to Salisbury to build Stonehenge 4,000 years ago

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Well, who cares?  I'm glad the Mail managed to extract some humour out of the story, and it makes a change from all that doom and gloom......

Treasure Trove?

Now here's an interesting thing -- I got a message from a lady who enclosed two photos with her email.  This rather interesting object has been revealed on a certain beach, in a secret location, as a result of the recent storms.

Has anybody seen anything similar before?  The romantic side of me thinks it might be a chest full of gold bullion, lost when the Spanish Armada was blown around the west coasts of Britain, with many of the vessels getting shipwrecked.........  It certainly doesn't look like something made by our sturdy Mesolithic ancestors, and lost in the submerged forest. 

Stonehenge rock concert fails to stir the fans.....

 Paul Devereux, who is the man behind the "ringing rocks" hypothesis.

 Paul trying to convince the reporter that the "one that got away" at Carn Meini is a ringing rock, by making some dull thuds with his little hammerstone.....

 Tim Darvill (centre) doing his best to be non-committal....

 George Nash, who managed (sort of) to find something encouraging to say.... no doubt after listening to lots of dull thuds coming from the Stonehenge standing stones.

Go to the 18 min mark to watch this rather excruciating demonstration of how people can make a lot of fuss out of nothing at all.  All rather embarrassing really......  Tim Darvill and George Nash put a brave face on it, but probably wished they had been somewhere else......

I hope my valuable taxpayers money was not used in this fantastical exercise -- but I suspect it was.......

Even the reporter looked embarrassed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03x0tx1/Inside_Out_West_03_03_2014/

Re-classification of the Palaeolithic

With no particular relevance to anything, I just thought my faithful readers would enjoy this.......

Rearranged Talk -- March 25th

The talk I should have given in Moylgrove Village Hall on 3rd December, but had to cancel because I was down with some nasty flu bug, has been rearranged for 7.30 on Tuesday 25th March.

Title:  "Stonehenge, Pembrokeshire and the Ice Age."

Everybody welcome -- and I shall try to avoid using the word "quarry"...........