Craster: Rocks around the Clock

Saturday 15^th April: Meet at 10:00 by the Tourist Information Centre at the entrance to the car park in Craster NU 256 198

The Whin Sill ribs its way across the whole of Northumberland and parts of Co Durham and Cumbria in a series of huge arcs. It withstood the onslaught of ice over the last few million years, standing proud of the terrain around it when the ice retreated 10 thousand years ago. It defines many of the iconic landmarks of Northumberland; Bamburgh, Lindisfarne and Dunstanburgh Castles as well as sections of Hadrians Wall are built on it, and the Laidly Wyrm curled its tail around it at Spindlestone Heugh. This 300 million year old rock formed of tough igneous rock injected between layers of Carboniferous sedimentary rock like jam into a doughnut is the reference for geologists looking at this type of formation.

In this walk we will look at a particularly fine section of the sill between Craster and Cullernose point and use this as the basis for exploring what the rocks can tell us about their enormous age.

The walk is run as part of the Northumberland Coast AONB series of geo-diversity walks. Just turn up. A donation will be asked for to cover the costs of the walk, an amount of £10 is recommended, however Northumbrian Earth would like to make these walks accessible to all, so a donation will be asked of  whatever you can afford and/or you think the walk is worth.

This walk will be approximately 4km, there will be some scrambling across rocks which will be slippery if wet.