Category: Iotd

The Lake District

We cannot know exactly what this area would have been like when it was full of active volcanoes, but we can get a rough idea from modern subduction regions on Earth today. Under the Mediterranean, for example, the African plate is being subducted underneath the plate carrying Europe.

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Image of the day – 173

A force on Stock Ghyll

This is one of the waterfalls along Stock Ghyll just north-east of Ambleside, Cumbria in the English Lake District. It’s beautiful countryside, and the nearby Force Cafe and Terrace served us a wonderful ‘Full Force’ breakfast. In the local dialect, a waterfall is known as a ‘force’, and there’s a whole string of them along this stretch of Stock Ghyll. A ghyll or gill is a narrow, deep, wooded ravine with a stream running though it. The term can also be used for the stream itself. Donna and I made our way carefully along this muddy, stony footpath, and it was well worth the effort.

Stock Ghyll runs right down into the town of Ambleside where it once powered a series of watermills, and finally flows into the nearby lake of Windermere.

Bobbin mills

Bobbin mills were common in Ambleside in the 19th century. Coppiced timber was cut to length and shaped on a lathe, then wooden discs were attached to both ends and the completed bobbins sold to the textile spinning and weaving businesses in the industrial cities south of the Lake District where they were used to store thread after spinning and before weaving. They contributed to the rapid growth of spinning and weaving factories in northern England. Wooden bobbin manufacturing died out with the 20th century introduction of plastics.

Formation of the Lake District

Skiddaw in the distance

The granite structures of the fells and mountains of the Lake District erupted from volcanoes during the Ordovician period some 460 million years ago.

Much more recently, repeated glaciations ground out U-shaped valleys arranged more or less radially and when the glaciers melted during warmer periods, lakes remained in the valley bottoms. Rivers flowing into the lakes or sometimes from one lake to another, have silted up some of the lakes at one end, and these flat, silted zones are now rich areas of pasture and crop land as well as places where urban construction has become possible. The photo above shows the mountain of Skiddaw in the distance and farmland in the foreground. The town of Keswick, out of the frame to the right, is also built on this flatter land laid down as sediment in the northern part of Derwent Water.

What else can we learn

One thing is very clear, what happens in one time period may be changed drastically at another, later time.

We cannot know exactly what this area would have been like when it was full of active volcanoes, but we can get a rough idea from modern subduction regions on Earth today. Under the Mediterranean, for example, the African plate is being subducted underneath the plate carrying Europe. The Alps and the Pyrenees have risen as a result, and volocanoes like Etna and Vesuvius are still actively pumping out magma or ash. The Mediterranean region is also prone to earthquakes. Now imagine (if you can) a mile or more depth of ice resting on top of the Alps grinding down the rocks to form U-shaped valleys as they slide due to gravity across the rock surface far below.

In Roman times, the areas of river sediment like that in the photo above would have been smaller than they are today and the lakes would have been correspondingly longer.

It’s very much a dynamic process. It’s a bit like the life of a person, we start as a new born infant and learn to talk and walk, then run. We learn to eat, and we learn to reason. at school we learn a lot more about the world we live in, politics, science, other languages, geography, history; we fall in love, we marry and raise a family; we have a career and learn how to manage the work environment, run a business, serve customers, manage bank accounts and so forth. The world is our playground, we travel on business or just for fun, we become grandparents as we grow older and retire from work. There are many beginnings and endings along the rich tapestry that is a human life. And lives intertwine in so many ways – friends, family, work colleagues, neighbours. Just like the Lake District, at any point it’s impossible to know what the future might hold.

Life is the same. What happened in my life when I was young is very different from what is happening in my life today. Change and unpredictabilty are the only things that are consistent throughout. If the ice hadn’t melted when it did, the Lake District would be far different from the place we know and love.

How do we deal with this built-in uncertainty? One way that many have found is faith, following a guide that we trust in ways that stretch us and help to shape our characters. Faith can be like an anchor in a choppy sea or even a full-blown storm, holding us safely in the right place until calmer conditions return. I recommend having an anchor in this experience we call life. But if you choose an anchor, choose carefully, there are some pointers elsewhere on this website. Hunt around and see if there’s anything here that you find attractive or compelling.

I’m always fascinated by links and similarities between one thing and another, life is full of them and sometimes they help to broaden our vision and understanding in ways that are quite unexpected.

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Mist arising
The Marine Lake
About Patrick
An Irish scene

Living fossils

Living fossils can be found and recognised over long periods of geological time, and appear very similar throughout. And they may have little diversity, in other words the species in the group all tend to be similar to one another.

Leaves of Ginkgo biloba, the Maidenhair tree

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Image of the day – 172

Every now and again biologists discover a plant or animal that looks uncannily like a known fossil. It’s happened a number of times.

Ginkgo leaves Wikimedia

Living fossils have two main characteristics, although some have a third:

  1. Living organisms that are members of a taxon that has remained recognizable in the fossil record over an unusually long time span.
  2. They show little morphological divergence, whether from early members of the lineage, or among extant species.
  3. They tend to have little taxonomic diversity.[5]

The first two are required for recognition as a living fossil; some authors also require the third, others merely note it as a frequent trait.

To put this more simply, Living fossils can be found and recognised over long periods of geological time, and appear very similar throughout. And they may have little diversity, in other words the species in the group all tend to be similar to one another.

Here are some examples, listed in order of their discovery. In some cases the fossil organism was already known before a living form was discovered, in other cases the living form was known first:

  • Dinoflagellates (1753, worldwide in salt and fresh water)
  • Ginkgo or ‘Maidenhair tree’ (1800s or before, southwestern China)
  • Echinothurioida or ‘Soft sea urchins’ (1870s, southern England)
  • Eomeropidae or ‘Scorpion flies’ (1909, southern Chile)
  • Coelacanth there are two living species (discovered in 1938 in the Indian Ocean) and (late 1990s off Indonesia).
  • Metasequioa ( discovered in 1941 in Hunan, China)
  • Glypheoid lobsters (1970s, Philippines)
  • Jurodidae or ‘Jurodid beetles’ (1996, Siberia)
  • Mymarommatidae or ‘false fairy wasps’ (2007ish, North America)
  • Syntexis libocedrii or ‘cedar wood wasp’ (2011, California to British Columbia)

What else can we learn from this

Two things really. The first thing is that species can sometimes exist for very much longer than normal. And the second thing we learn is that species with astonishingly similar appearance may rise independently more than once. So-called fossil species may be no more than independently arising lines that happen to look very similar.We see the same thing between different living groups, so there’s a marsupial mouse that looks quite like its European namesake. This is known as parallel or convergent evolution.

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Another umbellifer
Truth still matters
Evolution and behaviour

Crystalline inclusions in Cotswold stone

It seems that quartz geodes are not unusual in Oolitic limestone deposits.

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Image of the day – 171

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.

Click to enlarge

There’s a long stretch of dry stone Cotswold wall along the western edge of the Gloucester Road between Cirencester and Stratton. Walking along the footpath one day I was surprised to see the crystalline inclusions featured in this photo. The crystals look to me like a form of quartz (six-sided columns with six-faced prisms at both ends).

This might be part of a geode fractured open while quarrying the stone. There’s a small chance that the other side of the geode exists elsewhere in the same wall or in some other structure built around the same time. It seems that quartz geodes are not unusual in Oolitic limestone deposits. When they are stained purple purple the crystals are known as amethyst. The formation in the photo shows no hint of colour at all. The deposit must have formed from a particularly pure solution of quartz.

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A canal walk through Chalford
Lichens
A Cotswold scene

A grand old house in Cirencester

Mullings engaged the architect William Jay to design the house, and Watermoor House was accordingly built around 1827 in the Greek Revival style

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Image of the day – 170

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.

Click to enlarge

The land now occupied by Watermoor House and St Michael’s Park may once have been common land. But early large scale Ordnance Survey maps mark a much larger area, including that now occupied by the house and park, as a large nursery. It might have been owned at one time by Richard Gregory who was a Cirencester nurseryman in the 1790s.

The business (and probably the land) passed into the hands of John Jefferies at least by the early 1800s, and it seems that Randolph Mullings, a local solicitor, bought a substantial piece of it in order to build a large house in its own grounds. The details remain unknown, but Gregory, Jefferies and Mullings were known to one another, and Jefferies worked as a manager for Gregory on the nurseries. Gregory lost much of his money by providing surety for a friend’s loan, and Mullings advised Jefferies to continue managing the business and wait to see how things would work out.

Having acquired part of the land, Mullings engaged the architect William Jay to design the building; Watermoor House was constructed to Jay’s plan around 1827 in the Greek Revival style; and the garden and park were added to complete the property. The house is now grade II listed.

At some point Watermoor House became a private school until it closed in the 1950s or 60s. It may have had some other function following this, but today it is a residential care home.

I’ve cobbled this tale together from limited sources that may or may not be reliable. There are also many gaps. It would be good if the story could be properly researched by someone with the time and skills to undertake it.

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Resources for Cirencester history

What do we see here?

The water flows in the town are complex, this section is often known as Gumstool Brook, but it might also be regarded as a diverted part of the Churn.

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Image of the day – 169

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.

Click to enlarge

At the top of the image you can see the rears of buildings on Cecily Hill in Cirencester. Their gardens contain the trunks and foliage of mature trees just beyond the wall. The wall separates those gardens from the water channel and may have been built specifically for that purpose. Some of the tree branches have grown across the top of the wall.

Near the base of the wall is a distinct line, brown below and much paler above. I think the brown part of the wall is often underwater. The water flow is strongly seasonal, high in wintertime and much, much lower in the summer. The River Churn divides at the Gloucester Road bridge, only a kilometre from this point. The major branch follows the outside of the Roman city wall and usually continues to flow all year round. But the branch in the photo is fed from the outflow of the long, narrow, supply pound for Barton Mill and this in turn is fed from the main flow of the River Churn. The water flows in the town are complex, this section is often known as Gumstool Brook, but it might also be regarded as a diverted part of the Churn.

The pipework at the bottom of this wall was there in the 1950s and 60s when I was a child. Most of it was hidden then by a low wall topped with flagstones, but today much of the structure has fallen away exposing the glazed pipes. Out of the photo a little further to the left, the water disappears underground, running south of Coxwell Street and reappearing at the surface further west in the Abbey Grounds.

It’s good to know that the Town Council and the Friends of Gumstool Brook are looking into ways of improving the flow of this watercourse by adjusting the sluice management rules. We might see the water flowing properly all summer in 2026.

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Image of the day – 72
Churn flood plain
Churn flooding

Caring on the water

It might be as simple as a kind word at the right moment, or a helping hand to steady someone losing their balance, or even just a smile.

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Image of the day – 168

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.

Click to enlarge

This boat, seen here on the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal, is based at Saul Junction in Frampton on Severn. It might look like a tourist boat available for hire by the public, but it serves a different and entirely charitable purpose. Two similar (but not identical) special boats were built to provide opportunities for disabled or seriously ill people to experience a day on the canal for free. And for those that want to, they are also given the chance to explore the boat, see how it all works, hold the steering gear and so forth. The boats are designed for wheelchair access too. Check the See also link below for details and photos from the Willow Trust website.

I love to see examples of effort and resources being expended by enthusastic teams to greatly benefit those who need and deserve help. Every one of us can see the need for support of this sort, though not all are able or willing to provide it. But every single person in the world can do something positive to help others one way or another. It might be as simple as a kind word at the right moment, or a helping hand to steady someone losing their balance, or even just a smile. All it takes is an open eye, an attentive ear, and a willing mind.

If you are a wealthy person you might give thousands of pounds towards maintenance and fuel costs for these boats; if you have some spare time but no money, you might give time and energy to help with tidying and cleaning a boat between trips or helping in other practical ways. No matter what we do or do not possess, there’s always something we can offer.

It’s about contributing something, anything, in a world that’s not always fair or kind. And there are so many considerate, helpful organisations out there – everyone can find worthy opportunities in every town and most villages around the globe; even where there’s no local group or organisation, there will be many local opportunities to find and fill a need of some kind.

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Footbridge in Bedford
The art of persuasion
Ingredients of kindness

A glorious orchid

Orchids grow wild here in the UK, they’re not as showy as many of the tropical ones, and the flowers are far smaller, but they are still beautiful plants.

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Image of the day – 167

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.

Click to enlarge

Orchids produce such beautiful flowers, often in great abundance, and they last for months if protected from too much heat and strong sun. This lovely, white Phalaenopsis flowers every year for us, but this year it had a bad plague of scale insect on the backs of the petals and on the leaves.

Scale insects are not hard to deal with as they can be wiped off with a soft tissue moistened with methylated spirit. Or even just wiped away gently with your finger. But you have to be persistent because you need to remove all the adults and then keep on removing the smaller insects until you have broken their reproductive cycle.

Orchids grow wild here in the UK, they’re not as showy as many of the tropical ones, and the flowers are far smaller, but they are still beautiful plants. Some orchids have flowers that mimic insects such as bees, butterflies, and flies. The insects are attracted to the flowers, and sometimes even attempt to mate with them; they act as pollinators, spreading the orchid pollen from one flower to another and so helping the orchid produce viable seed.

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Pasqueflower
Meadow cranesbill
Fallen Rhododendron flowers

Tired as a dog

Like all dogs, Marple and Maizi spend a lot of time asleep. They sleep at night of course, just like we do; but they also sleep after meals, after walks, and any time they fancy during the day.

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Image of the day – 166

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.

Click to enlarge

Here’s a five-year-old photo of my brother-in-law Paul’s dog, one of a pair of black Labradors, lovely, soppy, friendly creatures. This one is Marple, I think, though it’s hard to tell them apart without seeing both at the same time – if not Marple, she is Maizi.

Like all dogs, Marple and Maizi spend a lot of time asleep. They sleep at night of course, just like we do; but they also sleep after meals, after walks, and any time they fancy during the day. Apart from doing what they are told they have no responsibilities, no chores, no planning or organising, but plenty of time to rest. And like all carnivores, they mostly want to find something to eat and then rest until hunger pangs set in again. It’s a dog’s life!

Now five years older, at 14-years-old, they sleep even more than before.

Paul and his wife Vanessa live in Weston-super-Mare, a seaside town with a wonderfully long and wide beach and some fine woodland on a hill. Needless to say, Marple and Maizi have always loved visiting both the beach and the woodland. And it’s in those environments that I’ve seen some of the special closeness of interaction between human and dog; the throw, chase, catch, bring back, drop process for example, redone over and over and over again!

The close interaction between people and dogs developed a very long time ago, in his book, ‘Sapiens’, Yuval Noah Harari writes:

We have incontrovertible evidence of domesticated dogs from about 15,000 years ago. They may have joined the human pack thousands of years earlier. Dogs were used for hunting and fighting, and as an alarm system against wild beasts and human intruders. With the passing of generations, the two species co-evolved to communicate well with each other. Dogs that were most attentive to the needs and feelings of their human companions got extra care and food, and were more likely to survive.

Labradors possibly take this cooperative union further than almost any other breed. The bond between dog and owner can be really close. It’s been my privilege to see that very clearly with Paul, his wife Vanessa, and their dogs Maizi and Marple.

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Knightstone Causeway
Wall art in Weston
Groups and group size

Another umbellifer

Notice how every part is sized precisely for the task it performs. The main stem is stout and sturdy, the stems that spring from it are much smaller and each one carries a number of flowers.

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Image of the day – 165

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.

Click to enlarge

This photo was taken at a different time and place from the previous Umbellifer image, but the structure of this flower is very similar to the previous one. The main difference is that this time we’re viewing it from below. This reveals the exquisite architecture of an umbel.

Notice how every part is sized precisely for the task it performs. The main stem is stout and sturdy, the stems that spring from it are much smaller and each one carries a number of flowers. Those flower stalks in turn are smaller yet, and each one carries a single, tiny flower. It’s exactly how an engineer might design something, each part as large and strong as it needs to be, but no more. Why and how? Well, in the case the engineer, because lightness means less material, less mass, and therefore lower cost. Failure will be unusual because the forces will have been calculated and the values increased just a little to ensure safety.

Your car is designed this way, it could be designed and built to survive a collision with little or no damage, but it would be unaffordable because of the high cost of the extra material required, and it would consume much more fuel because of its high mass. That’s why you drive a car when travelling, not a tank!

The same argument applies to plant structures. The umbel could be made to survive a hurricane, but it would demand much more photosynthesis to provide the cullulose and other materials required to make it tough enough to survive such powerful winds. That’s why coconut palms have far stronger stems than the umbellifer! Living things are not designed by engineers, they adjust to their environment little by little over many generations by a trial and error system we call evolution.

Sometimes people say, ‘It’s only a theory’, meaning that something is a bit shaky and not to be trusted. That is to misunderstand what scientists mean by the word ‘theory’. In everyday use the word has a sense of an untested idea, something you just dreamed up as a way to explain something – might be wrong, might be right. Scientists have a word for that, but the word is not ‘theory’ – it’s ‘hypothesis’. In science, a theory is something so well tested as to be essentially unrejectable. Evolution is a theory in that sense, like the theories of relativity or quantum physics or plate tectonics. Theories have almost no room left for argument.

You can’t believe in evolution, it’s not a matter of faith but of overwhelming evidence. Following Jesus, as I and many others do, is based on faith, and I write about that too on Journeys of heart and mind.

You might be surprised to learn that engineers sometimes use evolution to design things like aircraft wings. The software to do that makes a long series of small tweaks to an initial design and calculates which changes improve performance. And this process is repeated many times enabling the final result to be stronger, lighter and more effective. An aircraft wing (or other structure) created in this way is not designed with paper and pencil or with CAD in the normal way, it evolves.

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Truth still matters
Evolution and behaviour
The heart of a tulip

Bumble bee on meadow cranesbill

The photo is sharp enough when enlarged that you can see individual pollen grains on the bee’s black, furry body.

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Image of the day – 164

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.

Click to enlarge

Here’s a bumble bee busy collecting nectar from a meadow cranesbill flower in a field margin just a brief walk from my home. The cranesbills are wild geraniums, close relatives of the pelargoniums; both genera are widely grown as decorative plants in pots or garden borders.

The photo is sharp enough when enlarged that you can see individual pollen grains on the bee’s black, furry body. Click the thumbnail image and stretch it to full size, then look for little white dots on the bee, those are the pollen grains.

Mutual benefit

The bees and flowering plants co-evolved, ancestors of both succeeded best in the presence of the other. Presumably the bee ancestors fed on the pollen of wind pollinated plants, incidentally transferring pollen more efficiently than the wind. And plants that provided sugary solutions and flagged this with colourful leaves near the nectar and pollen source were more successful than those that did not. After a while the insect and plant species were locked into a mutually beneficial relationship. Flowers are wonderfully adapted to attract bees and supply them with energy and a protein source to feed to their larvae. Bees are wonderfully adapted to collect and store nectar and pollen while moving some pollen grains from one flower to another.

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Image of the day – 93
Meadow cranesbill