Scotland - Lady Victoria Colliery

 June 30, 2024

Jimmy, our tour guide and former coal miner at lady Victoria Colliery

Traveling to-and-fro between our country cottage in Gorebridge frequently brought us past the sign 'National Mining Museum of Scotland.' This is the kind of sign that makes me think, 'I know we will end up here before it is all said and done.' And so it came to pass, that on our last full day in Scotland, we knew we would be touring the Lady Victoria in Newtongrange, just up the road from Gorebridge.

An unusually gray sky greeted us that last Sunday morning in Scotland. We pulled together some breakfast got set for our 10 AM tour of what was once the deepest coal pit in Scotland at 530m. 

Our small tour group that morning got a look at the surface works (the underground shaft was filled when it closed on 1984) of coal mine by a former collier, Jimmy. We got a great bunch of stories of work and life underground, the techniques and the evolution of Britain's coal industry over the last couple of hundred years. Coal fueled the Empire and has quite the ingrained impression on the societal fabric of parts of Great Britain. The Lady Victoria Colliery was shut down in 1984.

A mockup of the conditions underground at the Mining Museum

Jimmy guided us through the tunnel and introduced us to the heavy equipment employed to mine coal

Jimmy & Mark at the Winding Wheel, the headworks that lowered men and equipment deep underground.

The stories of the coal miner's life were often brutish in their Dickensian tales of hard child labor and the hard scrabble life of mining families. The museum featured the machinery of the once working pit, but also has modern displays showing the aspects of mining, the dangers, the political upheavals that came with the miners and this critical industry to the British Empire.

***

After a morning of dark, dirty and dangerous tales of hard lives spent in the coal pits, we were ready for some sunshine and a walk in the fresh air.

Not only did we frequently drive past the National Mining Museum, but we also noted the Gorebridge Nature Reserve off our route as well. I took the short drive into the entrance to the nature Reserve and we were soon out and bout on our feet and walking among trees and streams in the Scottish countryside.

Sue and I stroll along a nature trail in Gorebridge 

A refreshing little walk after a tour of a dark colliery nearby

Our last evening in Scotland, I thought I'd be up for one more drive through the wonderful pastoral country of the Scottish Borderlands. We decided we'd have dinner about 20 miles south of Gorebridge in the lovely little town of Galashiel on the River Tweed. We mapped out the route to an Indian restaurant and had a large, spicy meal. Returning in the late evening light, satisfied in all that we had done for the past fortnight. We packer our bags and were ready for the next morning's commute back to Edinburgh to catch a plane back to Texas Time.

Scotland - Rosslyn Chapel

 June 29, 2024

Sue ready to tour the beautiful & enigmatic Rosslyn Chapel

Looking for more attractions near our base camp in Gorebridge, I saw that just a few miles away is Rosslyn Chapel. I think to myself, I've heard of this place. I am intrigued. I encountered Rosslyn Chapel on TV, back when my cable subscription carried the History Channel. Yes, that History Channel.

I must admit for several years I was an avid follower of some History Channel programming, including The Curse of Oak Island [about the myth of buried treasures and the mystery & treasure hunting brothers Rick and Marty who were digging on Oak Island off the coast of Nova Scotia, looking for clues as to who and when the mystery treasure was buried]. Also, there was once running on the History Channel a show, America Unearthed, featuring forensic geologist Scott Wolter exploring mysterious structures found in North America and proposing their possible origin as being remnants from unknown cultures or even European or Old World people sailing to North American long before Columbus. Scott Wolter on his show was keen on looking for links to the Knights Templar in North America and beyond.

Both of these History Channel shows had episodes linking Rosslyn Chapel with the secretive and powerful medieval brotherhood, the Knights Templar. The Knights Templar are believed by some to have carried sacred treasures obtained from the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem during the Crusades. Some also think that the Knights Templar then hid these treasures in North America for safe keeping. One of the Earls from the Sinclair family that built Rosslyn Chapel is asserted to have been a powerful member of the Knights Templar and to have sailed to 'the Western Lands [North America] almost 100 years before Columbus. The purpose of this Earl's voyage was to deposit relics such as the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant and the Skull of John the Baptist away from scurrilous forces subject to desecrate these relics, currently held for safe keeping in hands of the Knights Templar. At least that is the legend broadcast on the History Channel. 

And all of this mystery and intrigue has been linked to Rosslyn Chapel, here in our very Gorebridge neighborhood! Exciting!

Rosslyn Chapel entrance filled with symbolism

We enjoyed a lovely, winding trip through the Scottish countryside on our way to Rosslyn; getting lost a bit, though not intentionally, but also not minding having to redirect our route through glen and over verdant hill until we were where we wanted to be.

Mark referees boxing hares in Rosslyn green

Entrance into Rosslyn Chapel is limited to a finite number every hour and a half or so, thus keeping the visiting throngs to a manageable level. We purchased our tickets and were told to wait outside the gate for another hour. So, we wandered about town - the same town that has been wandered about in the past by the likes of the poets Robert Burns, Wordsworth and other personages of royal and earned fame, who have over the years stayed in the small Rosslyn Inn next to the chapel. Burns having scratched a poem of thanks to the innkeeper in a silver platter.

Poets visiting Rosslyn Glen thought it to be unrivaled in beauty in Scotland's landscape

Queen Victoria once also visited Rosslyn Chapel and decreed it to be a treasure and a shame that it had fallen into such disrepair, what with no roof and the intricately carved stone interior now covered in moss and overrun by forest botany. Enough said, by a decree from Her Royal Highness, the chapel was then set for efforts of restoration and repair over the coming year. The big boost to its restoration effort came from Hollywood and the star power of Tom Hanks. Rosslyn Chapel was featured in the movie based on Dan Brown's book, The Davinci Code. The studio contributed £20 million to restore the chapel. The 'Tom Hanks' miracle. 

The stewards of Rosslyn Chapel request that no photos be taken of its spectacular interior. For any readers desiring to get a peek inside this special place, I suggest doing a Google search of Rosslyn Chapel.

Once we were inside Rosslyn Chapel, we fell in with a young woman who was pointing out some of the enigmatic carvings and speaking softly, and somewhat authoritatively on the mysteries before us inside Rosslyn Chapel. 

We were guided to the front of the chapel where an ornately carved stone column stood among other, yet different columns. The most ornate column is known as the 'Apprentice Pillar'. 

Legend tells of the master mason who was building the chapel went on a journey to seek inspiration from the works of other masons work to be found in continental Europe. In the absence of the master mason, his apprentice had a dream of a beautiful pillar placed in the chapel, and told this dream to Prince Henry who had commissioned Rosslyn Chapel. 

The young apprentice was given permission by the Prince to carve his dream pillar and place it in the front of the chapel. The apprentice worked hard, full of inspiration and masterfully completed his pillar project. 

The master mason returned from his long trip, saw that a beautiful column was already in place of where he had expected to carve his masterpiece. His apprentice proudly claimed the work on which his master gazed. At this, the master mason flew into a jealous rage, taking the mason's mallet from his apprentice's hand and striking him in the head. The young, promising apprentice fell dead to the chapel floor.

The jealous master mason was hanged for his crime. And the fellow apprentice masons carved the master's head in stone and placed it in a position so he will have his gaze fixed on the work of his apprentice for all of eternity. The dead apprentice also had his likeness carved and place opposite the head of his master and his slayer in memorial, also, the head of the young apprentice's grieving mother was set near the likeness of her son.

Gargoyle drain spout

Now, in hindsight, I have my doubts that the young woman speaking about the mysteries and legends of Rosslyn chapel was an official tour guide, but she seemed to be worth listening to. It was then that I realized that she was being coached to some degree in her presentation by a familiar face; standing among our group was Scott Wolter, host of America Unearthed series that aired on the History Channel. 

I was told by our adjunct, impromptu tour guide that some recent investigators had fed a small camera under the floor to the burial chamber, which for centuries, the deceased crusading knights from the Sinclair family, rumored by Sir Walter Scott (among others) to be laid to rest in the subfloor crypt in full armor. The camera investigation revealed that those laid to rest below were now covered in sand and not visible. 

I spoke to Scott Wolter as I stood next to him in the crypt below Rosslyn Chapel. I wondered if the sand covering these noble knights might be imported from The Holy Land. He told me, that as a forensic geologist, if he had a sample, he could indeed determine the likely origin of the sand. I knew this.

Scott Wolter, then showed us an enigmatic etching on the crypt wall and suggested that one interpretation of this diagram could be interpreted as a map to Jerusalem, explaining that the four-sided parallelograms could be used as latitude markers for both Midlothian Scotland and the other for the latitude of Jerusalem. Interesting.

Mysteries abound. 

Sue tries to interpret the weathered remains of a figure 
on Rosslyn Chapels exterior.

We finished the our day in Rosslyn Chapel suitably impressed. Even if much of  the enigma was History Channel hype, no doubt it was a most beautiful and impressive building. But I do confess, I love a good mystery or two. I would go back again.

Scotland - St. Abbs, Lunch & Leisure

 June 28, 2024

Mark on the brae at St. Abbs Harbour

It was wonderful to lounge in bed together well into the morning as daylight which was filtering into our country cottage in Gorebridge. We were on holiday and we had no schedule to meet, no check-out time to hurry us along, not ques to stand in awaiting designated ticket entrance. It was an intentional life of leisure this Friday morning.

We had no breakfast food in our kitchen and no specific plans for our feeding. I felt open opportunities outside our door, yet I felt no rush to seize those opportunities. I felt relaxed. Once we were both showered and fresh for the day, I suggested that in my opinion it was getting too late for a proper breakfast, so I planned to take a road trip back to the coast and find ourselves a proper brunch. I had an idea that something good could be found in the small harbor town of St. Abbs, a place we had not yet visited. It was a bit further down the road from Siccar Point, the place of our pilgrimage the day before.

This is the kind of touring I find ideal; not setting an agenda, just a general idea of wanting to find and walk about a small coastal hamlet and follow my nose and count on a bit of good fortune in finding a meal and things of interest. It was a free-form day. It was an expectation of a double blessing. It was like having the recess bell ring while on holiday. It was grand!

We drove back along the route of A1107, which had befuddled me and my sense of direction in search of Siccar Point yesterday. Today, it was a different road, I was on good terms with the A1107, I was on a gallivanting adventure with no particular point in mind.  We wound around the coastal turns, the North Sea to our left, the road lined with pines, the sunshining in my eyes, my sweetheart on my left and all was right with the world.

We coasted through farmland and along old stone walls before cutting off into the tiny town of St. Abbs. There are but maybe four streets in town. We parked on the one that was above the harbor. We walked back to The Old School House which was serving lunch.

It is a day in St. Abbs where we slow down, 'stop and smell the roses', before sitting down for lunch.

The Old School House is serving lunch 'til 3 

  

There's a good crowd of older retired people - I am bit disappointed to realize that we fit right in with this crowd of 'older retired people'. I like to think of myself as not that old and certainly my young wife is not retired. No matter the demographics, everyone has got to eat. Let's sit down and get ready to dig in.

My gluten-intolerant wife is pleased to find that she can order a GF (gluten free) burger. "I haven't had a burger in a bun in a long, long while. That is what I'm going to have!" She is positively excited about her lunch order. She adds a chai to go with her burger. Eclectic? Yes, why not. We're in Scotland.

Yes, we are in Scotland, therefore, I will order fish and chips with a side of onion rings. And it comes with canned peas, I guess because we are in Scotland.

Dessert is also to be included - because we are on holiday in Scotland.

Mark shares a cup of tea and his pistachio cheesecake in St. Abbs

I find walking in the British Isles easier than driving in the British Isles. So we take a stroll after lunch and drop down into the harbor below. There is a terrace overlooking the harbor and we pause to take in the serene view before us. 

Beside us is a bronze piece, poignantly sculpted figures of women with babe on hip, children clinging to the hem of their skirts as they hold a hand to their brow, scanning the North Sea searching for boats, and in those boasts, hopes of seeing husbands, fathers and brothers returning to safe harbor. Those men never did. A great storm blew up in 1881, drowning the lives of 181 fishermen, fathers and husbands from the fleets of southeast Scotland. The North Sea which we look upon so pleasantly today is not always so. So tells the memorial beside us.

My wife stands above the North Sea next to a memorial to the surviving families and the 181 men lost 
in a single day in 1881 when the sea took nearly the entirety of Scotland eastern fishing fleet. 

On foot we descent the many wooden steps to the rocky beach and the postage stamp harbor below.

Postage stamp harbor at Saint Abbs, Scotland

We clamber among the jagged conglomerate rocks on St. Abbs'
rough & rocky beach

Sue searches tidepools for marine life

At the base of the stairs, we pick our way among wave worn jagged rocks, taking in the geology and looking for marine creatures biding their time at low tide in the tide pools carved into stone crevices at our feet.

We hop from rock to rock, the sea is placid in sunshine and a light breeze. The day is slow and leisurely and close to perfect.

We hop off our rock perch, passing over periwinkles seashells and limpets washed between rounded cobbles, stepping so as not to twist an ankle. We head for the concrete buttresses that stand as a bulwark against the often raging North Sea that beats against and  batters these sturdy stone standing at the foot of St. Abbs.

 

Hoisting ourselves up rusted iron steps, we mount the top of the concrete jetty and join the gaze of a few others staring out into the small indentation that forms St. Abbs' Harbour. "Did you see the whale?" a young woman asks us.

"No, we just now perched ourselves up here," is my answer. 

"It's right out there, near the that rock at the end of the harbour."

We look for a moment or two, before the dark dorsal fin and then a fluke rose out of the water. "It's a minke whale feeding," we are told by an informed woman affiliated with the marine sanctuary beyond these shores.

A local whale-watcher keeps tabs on a minke whale feeding near shore

We feel fortunate to see a whale. We see jellies floating by and we take the marine scents into our nostrils and along with it, the briny air into our lungs. We take the day's pleasures into our holiday souls.

Alas, it is too late in the day to take in Mackie's Real Dairy Ice Cream into our mouths.

We will return to Gorebridge and try our hand at shopping at the super grocery store chain known as Tesco. We get raspberries & fruit, scones, crumpets and cheese. this will be our light supper and if we pace ourselves, it'll have to do for breakfast in the morning.

Fisherman's gear stowed at St. Abbs' Harbour

As we make the climb back up the hill to our car, we notice the poster heralding  the next exciting event; the competition for a local lassie to be crowned the 80th Eyemouth Herring Queen. I wonder, if when the Herring Queen gets married, does she become an Alewife?

 Just curious about the local customs.

Scotland - Siccar Point: 'No vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end'

 June 27, 2024

Geologists, at least the good ones, are at heart, storytellers.

This post is a long story as told by one geologist.

Suneson - Geologist, blogger, storyteller at Siccar Point, Scotland.
The first page of the earth's story, at least as we geologist tell it, begins here at Siccar Point.

James Hutton hailing from Edinburgh, Scotland (1726-1797) was an expansive thinker and carries the epithet, 'Father of Modern Geology.' Like so many geologist to follow, James Hutton loved his whisky and loved the ladies. Having impregnated his girlfriend while in medical school at the University of Edinburgh, she was sent off in disgrace to relations in London and he, for the sake of the family name, was banished by his landed family to run the family farms in rural Britain.

Once upon a time, There was a young man, James Hutton by name, a thinker and believer in systems and observer of changes, even small changes. James Hutton, for his indiscretions and failed sense of propriety was banished from his studies and sent to work his family's land. Out there on the farm, every spring he needed to muck out the sediment that clogged the drainage ditches that carried the water off his farm fields. Every spring. 

James thought, how is it that I still have soil to plant my crops if my fields are continuously swept by the interminable Scottish rains and my soil carried to the sea year after year?

Hutton came to believe there must be an engine, a system of renewal, put in place by the Lord God Almighty, otherwise God's people would starve, not having  a field, nor even a garden to plant and till as commanded in the Book of Genesis. A just God would not let his creation starve, so He must have a system to renew the good earth, a system of re-creation. Hutton discussed his ideas with some of his friends of the Scottish Enlightenment and they consider it and suggested he present his ideas to The Royal Society of Edinburgh. 

So, he present his ideas to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1785. Hutton suggested that the earth was incredibly old, so much older than anybody has ever imagined and that the earth, land and sea were constantly and systemically changing and regenerating over time. But the changes took place in small increments over an incomprehensible amount of time - Geologic Time. Hutton proposed that 'The present is the key to the past,' meaning that the small forces of erosion by water and waves which we observe today washing new sediment to the sea where it was deposited are the same process that have always happened in the past. And over time, very, very long time, these deposited sediments were moved by great earth forces, lifted and returned as dry land. This was the process championed as Uniformitarianism. A process that took unimaginable eons, but cycled through and recreated the earth.

Hutton was ridiculed, scoffed at and shouted down as an atheist. Few believed that slow and gradual processes could and did create the world we see today. No! Most believed in Catastrophism, the process of exclusive sudden and violent change, such as an earth-drowning floods over a mere 40 days and 40 nights, accounted for everything that was visible in this world. To say otherwise was to challenge the hand and work of God The Creator. Of course his critics had small minds, in respect to both the workings of God and the geologic process that form the earth.

Hutton and his ideas, that, as he claimed; 'The present is the key to the past,' were challenged as having no scientific basis. Most of the western world and even his audience at the Royal Society held to the idea that the world was created in 4004 BC. This date of the earth's creation having been calculated by Archbishop Ussher of Ireland (1581-1656) using the biblical genealogy of Adam to Jesus. In fact Archbishop Ussher asserted that the earth was created on Sunday, October 23, 4004 BC. Gospel [for those who have a small god, closed eyes and a tight mind].

Hutton needed proof of expansive, geologically scaled time. James Hutton and some of his likeminded friends sailed up the Scottish coast from Eyemouth [I love that name] toward Edinburgh looking for their needed observational proof along the shore. They needed reasoned evidence that Hutton's theory of incremental changes over vast amounts of time added up to the creation as we observe it today. That evidence came into view for Hutton and his companions at Siccar Point. 

As they land their boat and stepped ashore, before their eyes was an amazing outcrop described as: vertical beds of folded, gray turbiditic micaceous schists and mudstones of the Early Silurian, clearly overlain by near-horizontal beds of a completely different rock type, brecciated red sandstone of the Late Devonian age. The underlying vertical beds were originally deposited (as are all sediments) horizontally. Over eons, the horizontal beds were tilted and folded by enormous, slow-acting forces to their current upended vertical position. Millions of years later, a different lithology was deposited horizontally on top of the older, now tilted and eroded exposed  beds. It was obvious to Hutton and his companions that they were seeing the results of deep, geologic time between these two distinct formations. John Playfair who was in the boat with Hutton that day in 1788 wrote; 

  

“Dr Hutton was highly pleased with appearances that set in so clear a light the different formations, and where all the circumstances were combined that could render the observation satisfactory and precise … We felt necessarily carried back to a time when the schistus on which we stood was yet at the bottom of the sea, and when the sandstone before us was only beginning to be deposited, in the shape of sand or mud, from the waters of the supercontinent ocean… The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far back into the abyss of time; and whilst we listened with earnestness and admiration to the philosopher who was now unfolding to us the order and series of these wonderful events, we became sensible how much further reason may sometimes go than imagination may venture to follow.”

Just as the Apostle 'Doubting' Thomas before him would not believe in the unimaginable power of God to raise Jesus from the tomb unless he himself tangibly saw and touched the wounds in Jesus' hands and pierced side; so too did James Hutton now have the tangible evidence of the unimaginable power of small processes repeated over immense geologic time to convince his doubters of the truth and force of Uniformitarianism, thus putting to rest the belief in Catastrophism.

*** 

As an undergraduate, I fell in love with the science of geology. I loved learning to read the language of rocks, to listening to the stories of the earth as told by lithologic details. Each mineral, formation, fault, mountain face and roadcut opened a new story chapter for those who had ears to hear the tales that were being whispered beneath our feet. Ancient secrets were reveal to me and those who had patience to look closely and understand that rivers, deserts, seas and serpents were once here, now vanished, save for traces decoded and interpreted by a practitioner of the geologic sciences.

I owe my career and much of my imagination as it follows the reasoning of James Hutton whose mind first captured the deep abyss of time, geologic time at Siccar Point. 

I married a geologist who explored the mountains of Mexico and mapped out ancient volcanoes and who has now long worked to share the great love and expansive ways of our God. I see no conflict with deep time and a great God who created the earth, its processes and placed in a universe so immense that one can scarcely begin to imagine. I took my geologist wife and my love of the science to Scotland. We had to see and read Page One of the story of deep time there at Siccar Point, the place of Hutton's Unconformity.

This day was a pilgrimage. A pilgrimage to the shrine of reason and to the far-thinking man who saw further into the world than any before him.

Siccar Point - Now, if we could only find this place. 

For all of my eloquence and hearty attribution to the significance of the history and geology and the accompanying thoughts and reasoned understanding - the location of Hutton's unconformity for all the world seemed to be a well-kept secret.

Off a narrow lane onto an even narrower lane, we found a wide spot to park and a promising trek to find Hutton's Unconformity at Siccar Point - if we were not blown over the sea cliffs on our way.

Finally! A sign. We must at last be in the right spot.

I find my way out of Dunbar, knowing that we are geographically close to the end point of our geologic pilgrimage to one of our science's greatest touchstones; Hutton's Unconformity at Siccar Point. I reason, this is such a renown outcrop, albeit, for the small community such as is made up of those who claim geology as their passion, that there must be a marker, if not, surely an identifiable wide spot in the road where pilgrims such as ourselves have come before, marking the way to the Holy Shrine of The Unconformity. 

I hold to my reasoning too long. I reason, surely we'll find a well elucidated signage post placed by the proud Fathers of County Berwickshire in the name of history and tourism coin. Hutton's unconformity is too monumental of a site of international heritage to be hidden as if it mattered not. I reason that Siccar Point must be one point of great Scottish esteem. It must be marked, so I hold to my reasoning. My reason in these lands fails me.

With Dunbar in my rearview mirror, we are southbound on the A1, so far so good. The quick and subtly marked turn off toward the coastal cliffs along the A1107 is found by a sharp eye and good fortune. I feel we are getting close. Now, to find those markers that proudly proclaim the way to the historic Siccar Point. I drive far down the A1107, knowing that we have travelled too far. There are no shoulders on the roads in Scotland, so I look for a place where traffic can see me in either direction, I slow and do a Y-turn in the middle of the road and return northward. What did we miss? Oh where can this Siccar Point be?

I come to a middle age gent working on the shrubbery in front of his house bordering the tiny A1107 lane. I pull to a stop, get out and inquire, "Sorry to bother you, but we happened to be looking for Siccar Point, somewhere near here..."

I get a quizzical stare. 

I blubber on, "Siccar Point, a really famous geologic outcrop, made famous my James Hutton, it might also be known in these parts as Hutton's Unconformity..."

I'm politely interrupted, "Sorry mate. Never heard of it. Sorry, best of luck, I can not help ya." 

I drive on in frustration at myself as one who has a nose for a good outcrop and an innate sense of good direction. Not even Sue's iPhone is of any help. I push on.

I see a small road that cuts off our road toward the North Sea, it has a sign posted; 'Downlaw Farm 2 mi.' I figure this is not the way, but it is a road and it needs to be checked out. About a mile down what amounts to a semi-paved driveway, I see a man operating a tractor cutting the field near this road we're traveling. I stop. I walk to the fence and lean into it, catching the eye of the tractor man. 

He idles his machine and walks toward me. "Sorry to interrupt your day, but we are looking for Siccar Point?"

He smiles at me, trying to understand my accent, "Aye, Siccar Point?" Shaking his head, "Never heard of the place."

I try the phrase "Hutton's Unconformity - it's on the coast..."

He grimaces. "I donnot know of anything like that. But you may as well keep on going," he points down the road in the direction we were driving, "there's a lady down there, been around here fer years, she might be the one to know about such if anyone will."

I graciously thank him and continue toward Downlaw Farm. We come to the end of the road, there is a stone house rimmed by a stone wall. I am not sure where the front of the house is and whether I'll find the 'lady whose been around here fer years' inside this house. I drive past the house and end up between a couple of stone outbuildings and a shed or barn. I park in front of what looks like a sun porch at the back of the house, modern looking and glassed in.

I ask my wife to get out of the car and accompany me to the back porch door, "I'll look less threatening if I've got a nice church lady standing with me," I tell her.  I knock, and quickly a young, late 20ish gal answers my knock.

"Sorry to bother you M'am," using some good ol' Southern Charm wording and accent hoping to elicit some sympathy for a lost, mild-mannered Yankee in County Berwick, "I believe we are in the wrong place, but we are looking for Siccar Point, a historic site somewhere around here that is known as Hutton's Unconformity."

"Tell 'em come in!" says a voice from inside the house. We are ushered in and find a woman in mid-30's watching tennis on the telly with her right leg in cast and elevated on a pillow as she reclines on the couch. 

I begin again, "I believe we are in the wrong place, we are looking..."

The one-legged woman stops me with a gracious and knowing smile, "Yes. Yes you are." I was expecting a much older woman from the description I'd been given up the road. She continues in good humor, "It's a shame, it really is, but nobody around her cares or knows about Hutton. He's really important, but for some reason he doesn't get any credit from the people here. You're from the States? Yah, Siccar Point, it might be internationally famous, but it's pretty much unknown here, I don't know why."

Sue offers her iPhone and shows her what we were working with and why we seem to be lost. "Oh, that is pitiful. That won't do, will it? There, grab my phone, I'll call it up on Google Earth and show you how to get there."

We look as she tells us to go back the way we came, take the second right, don't go to the caravan park, keep going until you see this wide spot in the road," she shows us the route and the parking place on Google Earth. "Don't go all the way to the plant at the end of the road, but put in here," pointing to the satellite image, "you'll have to walk past the ruins of St. Helen's church, a notable site in its own right. The cliffs are steep, are you planning on going down to the rocks?"

I admit that that was the point of traveling to here from Texas. "Oh, you gotta be real careful, those cliffs are steep and slippery."

We thanked her profusely and wish her a speedy recovery. She admits it was her fault, not the horse's. Foolish on her part, she should have known better, but now she has to recover from a bad break and surgery. We again thank her for finding and knowing where Siccar Point is and how we can get there. Feeling flush with luck we let ourselves out and continue our pilgrim's progress.

The ruins of Saint Helen's Church at Siccar Point

I inadvertently drive past the parking spot and end up at the produce packing plant. I turn around and park in the right spot, excited to be here. It is a half mile hike through a cowless pasture, full of waving grass in the stiff breeze coming off the North Sea, though we are crossing the meadow in bright sunshine.

The long-sought signage is on the side of the road. First order of instruction on the way to Hutton's Unconformity is to pass through the kissing-gate. A kissing-gate is so designed as to be able to open the gate to pass through, but in opening the gate, it is then positioned, once one passes through, to be closed against a second gate post. The ingenious kissing-gate is therefore never fully open to livestock, but swings to open for bipedal creatures. My wife likes the concept of the kissing-gate, passes halfway through and then puckers up. We kiss. I am allowed to pass into the pasture and we lean into the breeze and head for the unconformity.

Green pastureland rolls gently to the edge of the braes (sea cliffs) riming the North Sea

Sue catches the wind in her sails after a day of missed turns and hidden trails 
in our Pilgrimage to Siccar Point

My heart leaps at the sight of tilted, outcropping beds at Siccar Point

I keep my steps to a subdued trot, excited to make it to the headlands and so see and walk the angular unconformity that cinched the concept of deep, geologic time at this very place for James Hutton and his party at Siccar Point.

We were expecting another kissing-gate at the far end of the pasture, only to find it has been replaced by a stile. I remember asking and learning what a stile was many years ago when my mom read me the story of 'There once was a crooked man, who walked a crooked mile, and climbed a crooked stile.' No stile points for kissing as you climb a stile. But at least I could now claim to have climbed one of those fairytale stiles.

Once upon the other side of the stile, it was downhill to Hutton's Unconformity!

I took a look over the brae, it was green and appeared rarely walked. it was steep, I'd estimate an 80-degree slope down to the exposed rocks of the famous angular unconformity. I wanted to touch and walk the contact. I so wanted to stand where Hutton, the Father of Geology himself had stood and where John Playfair has written that 'the mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far back into the abyss of time.' I had come so far to be here. I was a pilgrim at the end of a holy trek. My eyes were lifted up unto rocks from whence came the concept of deep time. A place and an idea as Hutton wrote, 'with no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end.' Eternity. An eternity of small changes and makes mighty mountains and then wears them down to a peneplain and carries their sediments out to sea, all as a result of deep time at work.

I asked my wife, knowing she had been nursing a sore knee for much of our Scottish holiday, if she were willing to go down that steep slope, maybe a height of 200 feet with me?

"No. Not in these shoes." No, it wasn't really about the shoes, it was her knee joint that would not make the descent a prudent choice. I respected that and took another look at the slope before me.

At last! James Hutton's Unconformity lay before me in all time natural glory.
A near vertical drop of about 200 feet to the famous rock below.

Angular unconformity at Siccar Point.
Upturned Silurian  Greywackes now near 90 degrees from horizontal,
overlain by Devonian horizontal red sandstones. 

I had to do a hard and serious search of my heart and my 66 year old outcrop-climbing legs. I wanted to be down on the outcrop itself. But I also knew that if I went down, I would have to get back up. Ten of fifteen years ago, I would not have wavered. Now I was unsure. I was confident it could be done. But at what cost?

The sight of Hutton's Unconformity being so close was exhilarating. But, was it enough to satisfy the explorer, the rock-hopping adventurer within? I decided it would have to be enough to be this close. 

Teetering on the edge of the brae at Siccar Point.
Do I go down and then regret having to climb back up?
I teetered on that decision as well.
I stay atop and say, I've have come, I've seen and I have paid my pilgrim's homage.
It is enough.

In the end, I had come a great distance. I was thrilled to be here. My heart was that of a holy pilgrim at rest for having made the journey. I had seen with my own eyes. I had walked in the steps of James Hutton, I had offered up homage to a mind and a concept that has changed my life.

I stood above the outcrop and cast my eyes down and my thoughts up. 

I had come, I had seen. Yet, I had not touched the very unconformable stones themselves.

It was enough.

In the long tradition of geologist returning triumphantly from the field, we will return to Lime Cottage in Gorebridge this evening and find a local pub and have a pint of ale. 

Geologist and Pilgrims
Mark & wife above Hutton's Unconformity at Siccar Point.
It is enough.

 

Scotland - I came for James Hutton, I stayed for John Muir

 June 27, 2024

Sue and I said our good byes in the morning to our son Grant, his wife Kaileen and our daughter, Inga. They were flying out of Edinburgh and back to their respective homes on the East and West Coasts of the States.

As for us empty-nesters; we had plans. We'd pick up a small car in Edinburgh and since we're not expected at our rental cottage in Gorebridge until after 15:00, we had a full day ahead of us for adventure.

The top of my list was to visit one of the best know locations in the history of geology; Siccar Point. Siccar Point, on the coast south of Edinburgh is where James Hutton, the Father of Modern Geology, found evidential proof of his concept of deep, geological time - the virtually unimaginable time needed for small processes happening uniformly over eons of deep time to change and transform the face of the world. James Hutton found the evidence that he needed in the angular unconformity where older Silurian rocks had been squeezed and tilted into vertical beds over a great expanse of time and then millions of years later, these beds of folded and twisted rock were eroded and then millions of year later a different kind of rock was laid down horizontally on top of the angled, distorted beds. The juxtaposition of these two distinct formations told of the great expanse of time needed for an old earth to form in this fashion. It was here that James Hutton found evidence that the earth was millions and millions of years old. Much older than anyone had here to fore believed. Siccar Point is a prime site for geologist to visit when they chance to get to Scotland.

But first, how about some lunch before we scramble down to Hutton's Unconformity at Siccar Point. I suggested that we find a town on the way to Siccar Point, a town on the coastline where we can amble about and find some lunch while looking out across the North Sea. My wife, looking at the map on her iPhone, suggested we stop in Dunbar. It fits the bill and our exit off of Highway A1 is coming up soon. 

We find ourselves on the main street of Dunbar, Scotland

I turned east toward Dunbar, the welcoming signs made sure that any visitors, such as ourselves, understood that Dunbar was the birthplace of John Muir. John Muir the founder of the Sierra Club, writer, philosopher, inventor, poet, wanderer and inspiration for the naturalist movement in the United States and subsequently the world. Well, we'll have to see this place of John Muir, I said to my sole passenger.

We found a parking place on the main avenue and wandered a few doors back to where the American and Scottish flags flew above the entrance to the home in which John Muir was raised. The sign advertised Free Admission. This is looking better all the time.

I stepped through the open door and was mildly greeted by a volunteer woman at the small desk in the front space of John Muir's home. I replied with an enthusiastic, "Hello!" 

Mark at the entrance to John Muir's boyhood home in Dunbar, Scotland.

She was set back momentarily, for the volume and vigor of such a response seemed to be uncommon in her experience. She immediately settled into the warmth of my pleasant nature, acknowledging the good spirit at which I had entered her museum. "I attended John Muir Junior High!" I proudly proclaimed. We smiled and we were all off to a jolly good start.

Another woman introduced herself and began to explain that we were welcomed to see further inside this 3-story residence. We wound our way up the stairs, familiarizing ourselves with the timeline of John Muir's life, achievements and works. Plenty of photos and quotes. Many of which were somewhat familiar to me, having grown up so close to Yosemite - a place synonymous with John Muir.

We finished our enlighten visit, had a further discussion with the volunteer about Muir and how he was much celebrated in America, but such recognition came much later in his native Dunbar, Scotland. 

I mentioned that we were on our way to honor the memory of another of Scotland's native sons, James Hutton, the Father of Geology; but were delighted to stumble upon John Muir's legacy in our process of wandering about these parts. I then asked for a recommendation for a lunch shop. 

We were given a few from which to choose. We thought Wishing Tree by The Sea sounded like our cup of tea. We were given some arm-waving contradictory directions and so we set out walking. First we tried the harbor area, it was by the sea, but no Wishing Tree in view.

Sue checks directions to Wishing Tree on her iPhone.
We now know it isn't by the sea, or at least the harbor. 

It is but a block or two back into town, we stroll along the edge of the shore looking in the direction in which we believed we were directed by a well-meaning local.

The view out to sea from Dunbar's seaside park

We keep walking and cut through the gate of a walled garden park. We meet with success as we walk up to the window of Wishing Tree by The Sea and order our lunch. We wait for a few minutes on the outside picnic tables, but decide it is too blustery, so we move inside the garden dining shelter.

Lunch is good. Dessert is great.

We walk back to the car on main street and head off in search of James Hutton and his geologically famous unconformity.