Shropshire | 2 day field trip – September 2024

This event is open to GESGB members only and information provided on the registration form will be will be checked on the membership database. Please read through the registration terms and conditions before registering.

If you are interested in becoming a member of GESGB please visit: https://www.ges-gb.org.uk/membership/

We are pleased to invite GESGB members to register for the Shropshire field trip.

📅  Date: 7 & 8 September 2024

⏰ Time: 8:15am for 8:30am start

📍 Location: Shropshire area (meeting point to be provided to registered members)

🚗 Travel
All participants are required to make their own travel arrangements. Please bear in mind, you will need to use your own vehicle during this field trip. All locations will have parking facilities.

🏨 Accommodation
All participants will be responsible for making their own accommodation arrangements. We advise you to book your accommodation in the Ludlow area for the nights of 6 and 7 September. There are many accommodation options in Ludlow, offering a range of prices and availability. Please visit booking.com to find accommodation that suits your budget and requirements.

🥗 Catering
The GESGB field trip leader will be hosting a dinner on the evening of 7 September. The cost of dinner will be included in the registration fee. Details of the restaurant will be provided to registered members. Participants are required to make all other catering arrangements. 

Places are limited so book early to avoid disappointment! 

Shropshire sits on the English side of the Welsh Borders, just as it sits along the edge of the Palaeozoic Welsh Basin. Pleasant scenery, nice pubs and a generally benign microclimate combine with fabulous outcrops, which is all highly conducive to learning about the geology of a famous basin margin.

The GESGB field trip to this area will give participants the opportunity to understand structure and stratigraphy in a deeply exhumed faulted margin, with overprinted late inversion, entirely relevant to understanding the younger passive and rift basin margins in which we usually prospect for oil, gas and minerals, and develop mines and fields.

Key is that all the parking places are massive – mostly public car parks. There is an option of a pull in to a layby on a very quiet C road across the moors in the middle of the Longmynd, but very much optional, and we might not have time for anyway.

Saturday – 7 September 2024

Stop 1 – Cardingmill Valley Public Car Park

• Walk up Cardingmill valley, up sequence, in the Precambrian.
• Coarsening up sequence with volcanic tuff layers at top (waterfalls). Stretton group.
• Possible tea and cakes in café afterwards. Ca 1 – 2 hours. 1.5 km gentle walk each way.
• Drive ca 10km of spectacular moorland C road across the Precambrian with possible stop a half way across to look at conglomerate layers within the upper Precambrian (Wentnor group).

Stop 2 – Public car park at “The Bog” mine

• Pb-Zn-Ba mine and one of a collection of mines responsible for ca 10% of UK Lead production in the 19^th century, and worked since Roman times. Oil seeps in the area (although we wont examine them). From here, walk up the Stiperstones – ca 1.5 km gentle walk each way.
• Examine steeply dipping lower Ordovician (Arenig) quartzites unconfomable on Cambrian and Precambrian. Tilted and folded during Inversion of Welsh Basin. Assuming there are views, look out over Cambro-Ordovician-Silurian inverted Welsh basin, with calc-alkaline Ordovician volcanic island arc in the distance (Snowdonia). Possibly examine overlying Ordovician Mytton flags if time allows (host rock to baryte and galena veining and bituminous fractures). Note the intense structuring in the Welsh basin, for comparison with unstructured rocks of similar age on shelf tomorrow. Ca 10km drive to stop 3.

Stop 3 – Hillend Farm. Offroad parking in very large layby.

• Examine basal Silurian unconformity onto Precambrian. Fossiliferous Pentamerus beds.
• Return to accommodation

Sunday – 8 September 2024

Stop 4 – Broadstone Farm Yard

• Very friendly farmer lady, welcoming of ad hoc geological groups
• Fabulously fossiliferous uppermost Silurian (Aymestry limestone), just beneath the transition beds which pass into the overlying Devonian (the infamous Pridoli !).
• Ca 5km drive to stop 5

Stop 5  – Roadside parking on quiet road, for well-known local view point.

• Examine undeformed Wenlock limestone reef (compare and contrast with yesterday), on the Silurian shelf. Carbonate facies rather than clastic, and no cleavage.
• Ca 5km drive to stop 6

Stop 6 – Café in Much Wenlock for lunch

Depart