Saturday 26th - Tuesday 29th March 2011
FIFE  COAST
Tour: Geowalks
Participants: 8 to 10
Weather:  Very favourable for the time of year - dry and calm.

 

We walked the eastern end of the Fife Coastal Path in the East Neuk of Fife over four days. The geology is dominated by sandstones, shales and limestones with occasional very thin coals, of  Carboniferous age, with older rocks - of Old Red Sandstone age - represented in only one small locality.

Day 1: Earlsferry to St. Monans - a section dominated by volcanic vents filled with agglomerate or tuff, all lying on or close to the Ardross Fault.  One such vent is famed for its content of tiny garnet crystals - the Elie Rubies.

Day 2: St. Monans to Anstruther - with exposures of the distinctive Ardross Limestone.

Day 3: Crail to Kingsbarns - with a fossil tree stump at Crail and a tiny exposure of Old Red Sandstone.

Day 4: Kingsbarns to St. Andrews - with some excellent examples of folded rocks and the famous Rock and Spindle.

 
  Day 1:  Newark Castle on its base of Carboniferous sandstone.
  Day 1:  Worm tubes exposed on the base of a lump of shale.
  Day 1:  A bifurcating dyke cutting typical grey vent agglomerate.
  Day 2:  The trace fossil Zoophycos forms the concentric circles on this sandstone bedding plane.
  Day 3:  A nice example of Stigmaria tree root, exposed in Carboniferous rocks near Fife Ness.
  Day 3:  The "blue stone" is a glacial erratic possibly derived from Scandinavia.  In the foreground, the red sandstones are of Old Red Sandstone age, the only exposure of these older rocks on the east coast of Fife.
  Day 3:  Trackways of a giant millipede (Arthropleura?), one of several examples in sandstones from near Fife Ness. 

 (see also my last field trip, Lochranza, July 2010).
  Day 4:  Buddo Rock, a sea stack of red carboniferous sandstone.
  Day 4:  The famous Rock and Spindle, near St. Andrews, is within a large agglomerate filled volcanic vent.
  Day 4:  A closer look at the Rock and Spindle reveals a cylindrical intrusion with radial cooling joints, cutting through grey agglomerate forming its base and fed by the feeder dyke seen at left.
  Day 4:  A fine example of an anticlinal fold in Carboniferous rocks close to St. Andrews. The fold is plunging towards the top right. A fault is clearly seen to be displacing rocks on the right limb.
     
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