WGCG Spring 2021 Newsletter - Flipbook - Page 6
WGCG
Spring 2021 Newsletter
On the walk back, there were opportunities to take photos of the beautiful stags in the surrounding fields.
During September, the stags are in the rut and can be heard calling through the night and early morning in
the surrounding hills.
After a post-breakfast briefing on day 2, we drove towards the west of the island. Parking in Tor Righ Beag
car park, we set out on the forest path towards Kings Cave. The walk is through a wooded area for a couple
of miles, opening out into a dramatic view of Drumadoon sill. Before approaching the sill, we visited King’s
Cave. King’s Cave is the largest of a group of sea caves on a raised beach. The caves were hollowed out by
wave action when sea level was higher during early Post-Glacial times than it is now (McDonald, 2015).
The entrance to King’s Cave
Photo credit: Deborah Parke
Careful examination of the outer wall of the cave shows what appear to be sedimentary wave-related
structures, demonstrating that sea-level had been very much higher in the past. The authors’ field is not
sedimentary geology, but a tentative identification would appear to show planar stratification at the base of
the sequence, with cross stratification directly above (see below). Unfortunately, the sequence was too high
on the wall to place an object ‘for scale’ but estimate that the entire sequence from top to base was 2030cm.
Sedimentary bedding outside King’s Cave
Photo credit: Deborah Parke
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