Day 1:
Me posing having just made it to the top of one of the hills in our mapping area, morale still high on day 1.
Catherine (my mapping partner and I) started off the project strong being unable to find somewhere to park. Our mapping area is about a 15 minute drive from the place we are staying which is not a problem apart from the lack of car parking available in the Irish wilderness. After a nine point turn which narrowly avoided a ditch we managed to find a passing point big enough to park in without blocking and left the car to begin our mapping for the day.
It's safe to say we did not anticipate the lack of access to Irish farmland. Assuming there would be public footpaths like you get in the UK was our first mistake. There were many many fences to navigate, but after talking to a local farmer who told us to "just walk on the land, they won't shoot you", we went on our way scrambling over, under and through barbed wire and dry stone walls.
The next obstacle to face was the fact that we chose to walk straight up the steepest part of the hill. Whilst a 400m ascent is actually not that much, going practically vertical up it was a bit of a task. We did however come across some lovely outcrops and a stream with particularly good exposure that we noted down to come back to later.
The aim of our first day was to do a reccy of the area to figure out what we wanted to map and where would be the best places for outcrops of rock. Reaching the top of the hill was great for this as we got a view across the whole area and were able to make some (sort of) lovely sketches.
After a lunch stop on the top we consulted the map and decided to walk down the other side of the hill. This was a lot less steep and seemed, at the time, like a much better idea. I'm not sure it was. There were many, many fences to navigate and we weren't even sure at one point we were going to be able to make it back to the road. We ended up going a very long, convoluted route back through A LOT of bog land and a long stretch of walk on the road to get back to the car.
Once we eventually made it back to the car, disappointed in the fact that our tracking app told us our average speed was 1mph (there was a lot of stopping to look at rocks and eat snacks etc), we zoomed home in time for a evening spent writing up, cooking enchiladas for dinner and a lot of google earth research to work out a better plan for getting to the other hill in our area tomorrow!
First day officially complete.
Day 2:
Catherine measuring the dip of a lovely outcrop on day 2.
The second day in the field I think was arguably more successful than the first. After a slow drive into the mapping area due to a herd of cows being taken down the road by a local farmer, we found a much better parking spot than yesterday involving a lot less hedge and a lot more actual tarmac. We headed off up the other hill to the west of our mapping area starting off along a little river through some sheep fields and then began our ascent. Lots of fences had to be navigated, a number of slips on wet rock took place but we made it to the top by 2pm for lunch. Yes, we had lunch at 2pm. I was not happy about it!
The actual mapping of the outcrops went a lot better than the day before. We began to assign names to our units and I am beginning to feel a bit more confident about my observations. It is however, only the second day so I'm sure many mistakes are to be made.
The weather today was very confusing. It was on and off between sunshine and heavy showers leaving us dressed head to toe in waterproofs, periodically being able to take our hoods down. In an annoying coincidence the weather seemed to be fine and sunny when we were looking at the outcrops but began to rain each time we took out our field slips to write on. Not ideal!
Day 2, however, I would call a success and we returned home with a plan for tomorrow and a parking space already scouted out. Field slips needed to be written up, diagrams coloured in, and daily summaries completed after dinner before we all reconvened to watch Love island, a great end to the day.
Day 3:
A potential fossil we found. Not sure what is it, or if it even is actually a fossil.
Having solidly planned out our driving route and checked out the parking space the day before, we were confident setting off. My little Mazda somewhat struggled with the winding, stony farm track we took her up but she powered through and made it up unscathed. Given I learnt to drive on the eight lane highways of Dubai, Irish country roads have been a bit of a different experience but I am beginning to trust myself a lot more on the twists and turns, and by the end of the six weeks here I think I'll be a pro.
We decided to attack the north side of one of the hills in our area that we didn't manage to reach the day before. After picking out a route for the climb up and determined the most effective method for scaling a barbed wire fence (many of which it turns out we had to cross, even right on the top of hills) we set off, mapping outcrops as we went. Today was a particularly thrilling day geologically with us identifying a bunch of new lithologies including our first lot of sedimentary, rather than metamorphic, rocks. This was very exciting as it opened up the realm of fossil (we saw some tiny shells but are hoping for more), and sed structures such as cross bedding and ripples etc. We did A LOT of sedimentary geology in lectures this year so Catherine and I know somewhat what we are talking about, a nice change from the metamorphics.
The weather today however was not so fun. The variability of Irish weather is really quite irritating. One minute its blue skies and sun and the next you're in a torrential downpour. We barely had time to put our waterproof trousers on. I have also rediscovered that my boots are not nearly as waterproof as I would like them to be given the scale of bog we have to cross. This is a fact I discovered on the field trip to Assynt and failed to address until my mum bought some boot waterproofer just before I left. Unfortunately it did not do its job and my boots are indeed not waterproof. They are now situated on a radiator in the hopes that they will dry out and I don't have to have soggy socks again tomorrow.
We returned home a little earlier than we have been, at about 4:30PM, just in time to go do another food shop. Catering for six people who have been out hiking everyday requires a lot of food. More than we anticipated, so we set off again to Aldi and returned with 24 bananas, 10 apples, many many onions and a lot of chocolate digestives. We had also planned out our meals for the rest of the week so food has been acquired for the next few days.
Given we are only on Day 3, morale is somewhat low. Its quite a daunting process having to map a large area and it seems like very little progress is being made. Days are very long and after 7-8 hours in the field we have to come home and cook, clean up, do our office maps and plan for tomorrow. Finding time to just relax has been rather tricky and only having one rest day a week (that's the plan but I'm hoping for a few more dotted in there) it just seems a bit relentless. Nevertheless, being here is compulsory for the degree and when I called my mother she was of the opinion that we will settle into a rhythm and it'll get easier, so lets hope she is right!
Day 4:
Me captured mid sketch of a particular outcrop with a lovely view of Lough Kilbride in the background.
Day 4 started off with some stress involving finding a place to park. Firstly, the convenient petrol station in the middle of our mapping area turned out to be not so convenient as it only has diesel. With my car not being a diesel car, this was unideal. With not enough petrol in the car to get home and back to the mapping area tomorrow this did cause minor stress but we did locate a petrol station so mapping will be able to occur tomorrow as planned.
After the petrol station fiasco we had to find somewhere to park. The roads we went down tended to end in signs such as 'no unauthorised access' and 'biosecurity risks, no entry'. Catherine however, who is designated navigator for the whole trip, did some quick google maps research and we found a cute little farm track we managed to park on the edge of.
A steep ascent later we got to the top of our hill (the other one to where we had been for the last two days) and headed north looking at outcrops as we went. Overall, today was a pretty good day other than a knee depth fall into a bog resulting in getting my socks out at lunch to dry them off (sorry Catherine). We had some funky conglomerates, A LOT of grey sands that did get a bit boring after a while, and the odd purple sandstone. I'm starting to get familiar with some of the lithologies which is very reassuring and it feels like we are finally starting to get somewhere. The weather today was also very lovely and it barely rained on us at all. Big wins for the day!
The day ended with the first occurrence of ticks so far. Three of us in the group all had a tick which was a reminder to keep checking everyday. Ticks are very much less than ideal but past field trips to Scotland mean that we are very familiar with checking and know exactly how to remove them.
2 more days in the field and time for a rest!
Day 5:
My weather writer in use next to one of our outcrops, featuring Catherine taking a dip measurement.
We woke up this morning thinking we still had two more days in the field to go before a rest. Parking in the same place as yesterday, we began a climb up the hill that ended in us finding ourselves on a practically vertical cliff face, watching a wall of heavy rain approaching us. This, we decided, was probably a bad situation to be in, so we left the outcrop we were looking at and scrambled to the top, only for the cloud to actually miss the hill we were on and go over the lough instead.
The day itself seemed like a short one and spirits were low as it felt like we hadn't achieved much. Looking back at the office maps in the evening though revealed that we actually managed to narrow down the location of quite a few contacts (boundaries between different rock types) that we can go back and locate on another day so it was quite successful after all.
Having left our car in the exact same spot we did yesterday, we managed to worry a local farmer into thinking that we had been in the hills since yesterday morning and not yet returned. We bumped into him on our way back to the car and he had been going up into the hills to look for us, what a sweet guy! Our brief chat with him was some very welcome human interaction and we thanked him, warning him we would be here, parking in the same spot, for the next five weeks so not to worry about us again.
After getting home, cooking a stir fry for dinner and spending an hour and a half putting localities onto various office maps we finally looked at the weather forecast. With tomorrow looking like heavy rain all day and no one really fancying climbing a hill in that weather we decided to switch our rest days to have day 6 off and go back to the field on day 7.
That means that the first week is done! I am exhausted, still not really sure what rocks we are looking at and not exactly thrilled about doing this for five more weeks. Between the rain and long field days though we are actually having a good time. People are coming out with some great chat, delicious meals are being cooked every evening and the group viewing of love island each night is a highlight of every day. Hopefully, after our day off we will all be ready to go and do it all again!
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