Location: Attacal, County Down and Ballintoy, County Antrim in Northern Ireland, UK
Web: http://www.dur.ac.uk/d.a.jerram/VMSG/meetings.html
In the Footsteps of Giants: Irish Legends and Palaeogene Magmatism
Contact: Carl Stevenson (c.t.stevenson@bham.ac.uk)
This year’s VMSG field trip will be to the Palaeogene igneous centres of Northern Ireland. The Northern Irish sector of the British and Irish Palaeogene Igneous Province (BIPIP) is a classic area in British and Irish geology containing key subvolcanic complexes – the Mourne Granite Centres, Slieve Gullion Ring Complex and the Carlingford Complex, and the UNESCO World Heritage site the Giant’s Causeway. This region is also steeped in mythology where the fabled giant Finn McCool acquired his name (Finn or Fionn meaning fair) when he was tricked by a witch to dive into an enchanted pool at the summit of Slieve Gullion. Then there is the eponymous Giant’s Causeway which was part of a spat between Finn and the Scottish Giant Fingal (of Fingal’s Cave on Staffa).
On this trip we plan to visit localities in the Mourne Granites, some new road cut outcrops through the Slieve Gullion ring-complex, cone sheet outcrops of the Carlingford Centre, faulting and intrusion relationships west of the Antrim Basalt plateaux, the Portrush Sill and, of course, the Giant’s Causeway. The aim of the trip is to consider the structural relationships of these subvolcanic intrusions, the implications for their emplacement and examine new evidence for tectonomagmatic relationships in this sector of the BIPIP.
Costs:
Full price £350 Student £280
(£50 deposit with full price to be paid by registration deadline is also acceptable, but payment after registration deadline will incur a £50 admin. charge)
Price includes full board YH accommodation and a field guide. Places are limited to 30, given on a first come first served basis and are already filling up fast.
Registration deadline 1st July (or when places are filled).