Limestone pavement

It was a later start than usual to our day, owing to a 'convivial' time being had with friends across the valley last night.

The day was blustery with squally showers but I ventured over the moors to call on a friend. We took her dog for a blow along the beach. Luckily the wind was from the south so we headed along the beach northwards, with less chance of a nasty grain of sand getting into the contact lens. (On the way back we came inland).

The tide was really far out, exposing this limestone pavement, known as an 'alvar' in other countries I believe. This formation is created when an advancing glacier scrapes away and exposes horizontally imbedded limestone, with the subsequent glacial retreat leaving behind a flat, bare surface. Corrosive drainage along joints and cracks can produce slabs called 'clints' isolated by fissures called 'grykes' (from north-east dialect). When grykes are fairly straight and clints are uniform in size the resemblance to man-made paving stones is striking.

Further along the beach below the limestone, a coal seam had been exposed. Coal had been a major industry in the north-east till the Thatcher years, when the pits were closed as 'uneconomic' and coal was imported from Poland. In the 1970's when we had to be very careful with our budget, we would collect sea coal (poor quality coal which had been rejected from the mines and washed back up onto the beach) and use that to fuel our coal fires. I'm glad we don't have to do that now.


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