A Link With The Past

Last Sunday, I took a break from the woods and went fossil hunting. The area I went to was Walton-on-the-Naze in Essex, which is about an hour away from where I live.

I’ve never been fossil hunting, but a friend who I went with has been a couple of times, so told me what to look for and roughly where to look.

At the top of the Naze, I was taken aback by the erosion of the cliff tops. Apparently, this is happening at a rate of 2 meters per year.

The Hanoverian Tower - or Naze Tower, was built as a sea mark in 1720 and was the forerunner to the popular lighthouses of a later era. This tower will follow the world war two pill boxes and fall onto the beach in 50 years time if the area isn’t protected soon.

The cliffs are made up of a complex mixture of different geologies. If you want more info go here for a detailed explanation, but briefly there are three layers: The top layer is sand and gravel from the Pleistocene epoch, a Red Crag formation from the Pliocene and the bottom layer, which is a strange black sticky clay called London Clay from the Eocene period.

We were looking for bivalve valves and gastropods in the Red crag and anything from Shark’s teeth to wood fossils at the foot of the cliffs in amongst the London clay and on the partly shingle beach front.

It wasn’t that far removed from tracking as I ended up on the damp shingle, on my hands and knees searching for micro signs and getting “tracked out” as I searched for unseen clues.

And this was the haul:

Firstly, 4 Shark teeth identified by the highly knowledgeable Nazeman himself, Mike Todd, who runs a small store as part of an education project. These teeth are from Striatolamia macrota (7 gilled sand-shark) from the Eocene period - 53.7 million years old. I know this exact detail because these were found on Mike’s table at the top of the Naze! In other words, I got them from him because I failed to find any myself!!

Next up is some fossilised twig preserved as iron pyrite. I found this myself!

 

The piece de resistance for me was finding this piece of flint. I found it right up against foot of the cliff, in a puddle of water running off the London clay. Even though I didn’t get a chance to show it to Mike, I’m more than 90% sure that this has been knapped. I went on Mike’s website and confirmed that Neolithic knapped flint has been found in the area in the form of hand-axes and blades.

Another pointer is the brown/bronze colour of the flint. I’ve knapped this sort of flint before with the legendary John Lord. It almost certainly comes from Grimes Graves Neolithic flint mine in Thetford, Norfolk, which isn’t a million miles away from where I found this.

The final confirmation will be to send a picture to Mike and see what he makes of it.

I have little doubt that I am the first human to touch this tool since the last user, possibly between 7,000 and 11,000 years ago. That fact makes this an incredibly special find for me, possibly more so than finding a much older shark’s tooth (if I had found one that is). It provides me with a strangely personal, physical link with the prehistoric past and it’s no wonder people get heavily involved in fossil hunting.

The full haul is shown in this picture with a one pound coin (2cms –0.8in dia) for scale. On the left is (I think) Coprolite (fossilised scat) and the item with a hole may well be a part of a fossilised sea-sponge. The rest are fossilised twigs. I think the white shells are quite modern and should really be discarded.

I thoroughly enjoyed the day and I will most certainly be going back in the near future to have another fossil hunt.

Thanks for the visit.

A Link With The Past

Last Sunday, I took a break from the woods and went fossil hunting. The area I went to was Walton-on-the-Naze in Essex, which is about an hour away from where I live.

I’ve never been fossil hunting, but a friend who I went with has been a couple of times, so told me what to look for and roughly where to look.

At the top of the Naze, I was taken aback by the erosion of the cliff tops. Apparently, this is happening at a rate of 2 meters per year.

The Hanoverian Tower - or Naze Tower, was built as a sea mark in 1720 and was the forerunner to the popular lighthouses of a later era. This tower will follow the world war two pill boxes and fall onto the beach in 50 years time if the area isn’t protected soon.

The cliffs are made up of a complex mixture of different geologies. If you want more info go here for a detailed explanation, but briefly there are three layers: The top layer is sand and gravel from the Pleistocene epoch, a Red Crag formation from the Pliocene and the bottom layer, which is a strange black sticky clay called London Clay from the Eocene period.

We were looking for bivalve valves and gastropods in the Red crag and anything from Shark’s teeth to wood fossils at the foot of the cliffs in amongst the London clay and on the partly shingle beach front.

It wasn’t that far removed from tracking as I ended up on the damp shingle, on my hands and knees searching for micro signs and getting “tracked out” as I searched for unseen clues.

And this was the haul:

Firstly, 4 Shark teeth identified by the highly knowledgeable Nazeman himself, Mike Todd, who runs a small store as part of an education project. These teeth are from Striatolamia macrota (7 gilled sand-shark) from the Eocene period - 53.7 million years old. I know this exact detail because these were found on Mike’s table at the top of the Naze! In other words, I got them from him because I failed to find any myself!!

Next up is some fossilised twig preserved as iron pyrite. I found this myself!

 

The piece de resistance for me was finding this piece of flint. I found it right up against foot of the cliff, in a puddle of water running off the London clay. Even though I didn’t get a chance to show it to Mike, I’m more than 90% sure that this has been knapped. I went on Mike’s website and confirmed that Neolithic knapped flint has been found in the area in the form of hand-axes and blades.

Another pointer is the brown/bronze colour of the flint. I’ve knapped this sort of flint before with the legendary John Lord. It almost certainly comes from Grimes Graves Neolithic flint mine in Thetford, Norfolk, which isn’t a million miles away from where I found this.

The final confirmation will be to send a picture to Mike and see what he makes of it.

I have little doubt that I am the first human to touch this tool since the last user, possibly between 7,000 and 11,000 years ago. That fact makes this an incredibly special find for me, possibly more so than finding a much older shark’s tooth (if I had found one that is). It provides me with a strangely personal, physical link with the prehistoric past and it’s no wonder people get heavily involved in fossil hunting.

The full haul is shown in this picture with a one pound coin (2cms –0.8in dia) for scale. On the left is (I think) Coprolite (fossilised scat) and the item with a hole may well be a part of a fossilised sea-sponge. The rest are fossilised twigs. I think the white shells are quite modern and should really be discarded.

I thoroughly enjoyed the day and I will most certainly be going back in the near future to have another fossil hunt.

Thanks for the visit.

Signs Of Life

On Saturday I went into Poor Park woods. I was specifically looking for early signs of spring (ever hopeful.)

I’ve seen snowdrops on the roadside verges but very little else. There’s no birch trees in these woods so I couldn’t test for rising sap. In fact, all in all, I was a little disappointed.

I did notice some Dog’s mercury coming through the woods floor…

 

… and some early growth on this as yet unidentified vine-type plant.

Looking back at this time last year, there was certainly a lot more going on. It’s not really surprising as only a couple of weeks ago we had a load of snow. Nevertheless, the last few days have been beautiful and sunny, but still with cold nights of –2C and lower.

 

There was a lot of sign of mammal activity, particularly badger, who seemed to congregate in this one spot. I couldn't figure out why apart from possibly a territorial scent area that I couldn't detect.

 

As last week, I settled down to some scrambled egg for lunch. Even I can do this pretty well. If you crack a few eggs into a Pour and Store bag, add some thinly sliced ham, cheese and onions, take along your favourite frying pan and stove and you’ll have a nice light lunch in no time.

By mid afternoon I’d drawn a blank in finding signs of life in these woods. Despite the bright and sunny day, there was quite a strong, cold, easterly wind.

I sat down to finish off the last of the coffee and noticed a red shape trotting along the main track. He was inquisitive enough to observe me at a distance, and I managed to squeak him in a little closer but he didn’t fall for it entirely and eventually he decided to cut and run.

Mid-week I’ll talk about a great day on the coast today looking for fossils.

Signs Of Life

On Saturday I went into Poor Park woods. I was specifically looking for early signs of spring (ever hopeful.)

I’ve seen snowdrops on the roadside verges but very little else. There’s no birch trees in these woods so I couldn’t test for rising sap. In fact, all in all, I was a little disappointed.

I did notice some Dog’s mercury coming through the woods floor…

 

… and some early growth on this as yet unidentified vine-type plant.

Looking back at this time last year, there was certainly a lot more going on. It’s not really surprising as only a couple of weeks ago we had a load of snow. Nevertheless, the last few days have been beautiful and sunny, but still with cold nights of –2C and lower.

 

There was a lot of sign of mammal activity, particularly badger, who seemed to congregate in this one spot. I couldn't figure out why apart from possibly a territorial scent area that I couldn't detect.

 

As last week, I settled down to some scrambled egg for lunch. Even I can do this pretty well. If you crack a few eggs into a Pour and Store bag, add some thinly sliced ham, cheese and onions, take along your favourite frying pan and stove and you’ll have a nice light lunch in no time.

By mid afternoon I’d drawn a blank in finding signs of life in these woods. Despite the bright and sunny day, there was quite a strong, cold, easterly wind.

I sat down to finish off the last of the coffee and noticed a red shape trotting along the main track. He was inquisitive enough to observe me at a distance, and I managed to squeak him in a little closer but he didn’t fall for it entirely and eventually he decided to cut and run.

Mid-week I’ll talk about a great day on the coast today looking for fossils.

What’s In A Name

Poor Park and Park Wood are the names of my two local woods. No-one seem to know why the former is called “poor” park, although it might well have derived from someone’s name. Although the local village is more than likely named by the Vikings, the French may have given names to many other local features.

Like it or not, there are many French connections in the countryside and most stem from the Norman invasion. Locally we have a nearby Norman castle owned by Aubrey de Vere who was one of William the Conqueror's most favoured knights. Therefore we would expect to have a substantial amount of land connected with it to be linked with the Normans. Local rumour has it that a later Normal landowner was so short of money that he was called Simon ‘the Poor’ but I’m not too sure of that one.

The word ‘park’ also has connections with the Normans, for it was they who set up deer parks for local hunting purposes.  Thus you should expect any woods with the name ‘park’ in it to have some ancient connection with deer. There were 36 deer parks named in the Domesday book and these escalated to hundreds and hundreds in England before the English civil war decimated them.

Apparently it is still possible to recognise a medieval deer park even today by the egg-shape of the land and the earthworks used as the park boundaries.

Not only were parks developed by the Normans but so were forests. These were lands legally set aside for the hunting nobility. Forest Law inflicted severe punishments for anyone found interfering with the deer in the Forest. If you were caught ‘red-handed’ i.e. blood on your hands, you could expect only one form of punishment.

The oldest map of the two woods I can get on-line (visit www.visionofbritain.org.uk) is from 1856. I was hoping that it would show the two woods joined as one as they are not too far apart, but it doesn't quite do that. Instead there’s another wood to the south east of Park Wood called  Hook Wood. No trace of Hook Wood exists now. Poor Park are the woods to the south. There is no mention of the name Poor Park on this map.

The next map is from 1925 and reveals that Hook Wood has disappeared. It does show the medieval Hawke’s Hall which has also now disappeared. I live just to the north of the now named Poor Park at Scot’s End, although there is now no such place as Scot’s End now.

Park Wood has been significantly reduced in size and it is rarely named on maps. Interestingly, Poor Park (see the Sat Map at the top of the page) has not even changed its shape for over 150 years and is now one of the bigger woods in the area.

The council describes the woods as:

…[a] large ancient wood, originally comprising Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur), Ash (Fraxinus excelsior), Hazel (Corylus avellana) and Field Maple (Acer campestre), has now been widely replanted with Poplars (Populus sp.) and Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris). Despite storm damage and forestry activity, a typical woodland ground flora still survives.

I’m going to have to delve a little deeper and go back even further into the history of these woods.

Thanks for the visit.

What’s In A Name

Poor Park and Park Wood are the names of my two local woods. No-one seem to know why the former is called “poor” park, although it might well have derived from someone’s name. Although the local village is more than likely named by the Vikings, the French may have given names to many other local features.

Like it or not, there are many French connections in the countryside and most stem from the Norman invasion. Locally we have a nearby Norman castle owned by Aubrey de Vere who was one of William the Conqueror's most favoured knights. Therefore we would expect to have a substantial amount of land connected with it to be linked with the Normans. Local rumour has it that a later Normal landowner was so short of money that he was called Simon ‘the Poor’ but I’m not too sure of that one.

The word ‘park’ also has connections with the Normans, for it was they who set up deer parks for local hunting purposes.  Thus you should expect any woods with the name ‘park’ in it to have some ancient connection with deer. There were 36 deer parks named in the Domesday book and these escalated to hundreds and hundreds in England before the English civil war decimated them.

Apparently it is still possible to recognise a medieval deer park even today by the egg-shape of the land and the earthworks used as the park boundaries.

Not only were parks developed by the Normans but so were forests. These were lands legally set aside for the hunting nobility. Forest Law inflicted severe punishments for anyone found interfering with the deer in the Forest. If you were caught ‘red-handed’ i.e. blood on your hands, you could expect only one form of punishment.

The oldest map of the two woods I can get on-line (visit www.visionofbritain.org.uk) is from 1856. I was hoping that it would show the two woods joined as one as they are not too far apart, but it doesn't quite do that. Instead there’s another wood to the south east of Park Wood called  Hook Wood. No trace of Hook Wood exists now. Poor Park are the woods to the south. There is no mention of the name Poor Park on this map.

The next map is from 1925 and reveals that Hook Wood has disappeared. It does show the medieval Hawke’s Hall which has also now disappeared. I live just to the north of the now named Poor Park at Scot’s End, although there is now no such place as Scot’s End now.

Park Wood has been significantly reduced in size and it is rarely named on maps. Interestingly, Poor Park (see the Sat Map at the top of the page) has not even changed its shape for over 150 years and is now one of the bigger woods in the area.

The council describes the woods as:

…[a] large ancient wood, originally comprising Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur), Ash (Fraxinus excelsior), Hazel (Corylus avellana) and Field Maple (Acer campestre), has now been widely replanted with Poplars (Populus sp.) and Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris). Despite storm damage and forestry activity, a typical woodland ground flora still survives.

I’m going to have to delve a little deeper and go back even further into the history of these woods.

Thanks for the visit.

A Sad Phone Owner

“You never guess what happened to me?”

“Don’t tell me, you went into a Supermarket”.

“Don’t be silly. It wasn’t that bad. I got mugged”.

“What!!”

“I was standing outside the phone shop when someone rushed out and took my credit card. They ran back into the shop, came back out with my card and pushed an Apple iPhone box under my arm. Look!”

“Very funny”.

Despite cutting my computer teeth on a Commodore 64 and ever since fiddling about with a few computers, mobile technology has sort of evaded me. Until now that is. So what has turned Pablo from a mobile (cell) phone technophobe to A SAD phone owner (All Singing All Dancing - I’m going to copyright that!)

Well, it’s a number of things. Here’s a list:

• It has email.
• It can connect to the internet wirelessly at home or by 3G or Edge when out.
• It has GPS.
• It has a camera/video camera
• You can buy and watch feature films
• You can get and listen to audio books
• It has an iPod
• It has a photo album viewer
• It has a voice recorder
• It has some excellent and cheap applications.
• It has text.
• It even makes phone calls.

Some of the applications (called apps in case you didn’t know) are very good and believe it or not, some are suited for outdoor use. I believe the cry in Geeks-ville is “there’s an app for that!” So here’s my suggestions for some ‘shrafting apps:

Trip Journal

– Using the phone’s GPS, this application will track your movements over any distance. You can create waypoints, make notes or take photos if your trip. The track is overlaid onto Google maps on the phone and you can export it to Google Earth, saving your trip to your computer. The GPS accuracy is nothing like a dedicated unit but it isn’t bad. I got mine down to 24 feet in the woods. It’s surprising where you wander and how far you actually go. This app is great for trips abroad as well as local stuff.

 

GPS Kit

– This is more like a functional GPS unit. Put in waypoints and navigate between them or measure distance, speed, altitude etc.

 

Compass

This seems like a gimmick but it actually works due to the built-in magnetometer. The normal rules apply such as using it away from magnetic fields. Most of the GPS apps have their own version, but this one is quite pretty!

 

Chirp

– This application has 80 birds and their songs or alarm calls. I tested it out on a Robin who was extremely confused but then started to sing back to the phone.

 

Knot guide and Knots

– two very good applications that show you how to tie knots.

 

Maps

– Google maps, which together with the phone’s GPS will show you where you are and what direction you’re going both on a route map or satellite maps. The benefit of this over a normal GPS is that if there’s no GPS signal, the phone triangulates your position from cell masts. This app is pre-installed when you buy the phone.

 

 

Star Walk

– A simply stunning application that shows you what stars and planets are in the sky with constellation names and drawings. You point the phone at the sky (it uses the phone’s accelerometer and GPS) and it shows you exactly what you are looking at based on your position and the direction you’re facing. A great way to learn the night sky.

 

TreeId

– British tree identification described by bark, shape of tree, height, flowers, leaves, nuts etc. Not a bad little reference app.

 

Weather Pro

– One of many excellent weather applications. This one shows satellite and radar sequences, pressure, wind, etc.

 

Birds of UK and Ireland

– A fully featured electronic reference book of 250 birds of the UK. Not cheap (gettit?) but saves a large reference book in your pocket (also has bird calls, distribution maps, drawings, photos).

 

Radio

– Not strictly an outdoor application, but some people like to get a live weather forecast from a local radio station when out on the hills.

 

 

Memory map

– Ordnance Survey maps for the phone. The app isn’t all that stunning for the price (£19), but you get quite a few credits for 1:25000 or 50:000 areas of your choice. What is good is that it works off-line so if you loose any signal you’ve still got the map. Of course it works with the GPS so it tracks your position and you can set waypoints like the other GPS apps. An annoying downside is when you’re following a track, the map shows only north up and not direction up. Perhaps an upgrade will fix this.

 

I also have a variety of other applications on the phone like a journal, daily tracker, exercise tracker, dictionary, newspaper readers, twitter, blog publishing, Paypal and Ebay and errr… a pet fish called Eric. Unfortunately, the only animal tracking application I’ve come across is one for North America.

The trouble with the phone is that it sucks its own battery dry especially if a GPS app is on for any length of time. There are ways of reducing battery consumption but you really need to charge it every night. I shelled out another £28-00 for a USB battery pack which can charge the phone 3 times from empty. This is enough for 4 – 5 days in the woods without turning the phone off.

Another problem could be the weather. An outdoor phone it ain’t therefore a sturdy case or AquaPac case is required.

This certainly isn’t a outdoor tool and it’s certainly not traditional by any means and any old cheap phone would suffice for emergency purposes; but if you’re going to be A SAD phone owner, it may as well be this one!