After the dire summer last year we were finally blessed with a weekend of settled weather. It proved to be more than perfect for the 21 mile paddle from the North Devon coast to Lundy, and back.
Lundy is primarily formed of granite. Blah blah blah. Not that exciting you say? Well you’d be wrong!
Lundy mountains? Photo by Mark Rainsley.
Lundy granite was originally thought to be the synchronous with the other Devon and Cornwall granites, e.g. Dartmoor and Bodmin. It wasn’t until the development of dating techniques that it was discovered that Lundy granite is of Tertiary age (i.e. much much younger). This makes it part of the Tertiary Volcanic Province and related to the basalts in the Isles of Skye and Mull.
Apparently all caused by the separation of the British Isles from Greenland during the formation of the North Atlantic. Impressed yet?
Was the Granite Isle worth the 4.5 hrs it took to get there? Undoubtedly. The Lundy trip is still shrouded in the ‘halo’ that belongs to one of last year’s paddling highlights.
Granite Tors, Lundy. Photo by Mark Rainsley.
Dawn. Off the Exmoor coast.
Well, you can claim responsibility for my introduction to the wet stuff (deposit for June adventure will be paid on return), but we’ll have to wait and see about the hard stuff
xxx
By: Annie on March 3, 2009
at 4:53 pm
[...] at depth; it’s just a smaller sibling of Land’s End, Bodmin and Dartmoor (but not Lundy). This granite mass is related to the ending of the Variscan Orogeny. The Variscan Orogeny is a [...]
By: Paradise « Kayaking on the Rocks on July 1, 2009
at 10:49 pm