Geo Finds in Banbury and Oxford

A trip to see old friends in Banbury and Oxford unearthed a few interesting finds.

First off we stumbled (ahem - I navigated the family to it) a trig. A nice one - at the edge of a field but with a pretty buried BM.

We spent a couple of days in Banbury and whilst there visited the local museum. They had a sensory exhibition on Blind Art and I was very much taken with this picture in string.

Fun eh?

The next day in Oxford more treats awaited. In the Pitt Rivers Museum I stumbled across their marine navigation exhibit. [Some images have more info - click on them to read more].


And the in the Ashmolean more treats awaited in the form of Measuring Man,

some ancient maths,

a historic chart

and an upsidedown world. Purely designed for museum visitors but I loved it. It's not often you see the standard map up the other way. And why not?

Space Alert - My Head is Spinning

I spent some time with the British Geological Survey today. They gave a few presentations about all the work in which they are involved. Where do I start?

Apart from the 'standard' things you'd expect a national geological organisation to be involved with, they mentioned a plethora of European marine initiatives to which they contribute. And, yes, I was confused by the end. I'd heard of Seadatanet, One Geology [which I blogged on in Feb 08] and BLAST but not the Ocean Drilling Programme, EDMED (the European Directory of Marine Environmental Data) or MESH - Mapping European Seabed Habitats.

And whilst in Googling mode I also found EU SeaSed for shared European seismic data.

The more I Google European marine initiatives, the more I'm convinced that there are plenty out there and that I don't understand the inter-relationships between them all.

And then I became totally confused tonight when I clicked on the BGS website tonight and up popped a weather forecast for space!

But, back to earth (or substrate). This is one my brother-in-law will love - check out iGeology John!

Easy Trigs

Between my daughter and me we have pretty much wiped ourselves out healthwise for many weeks. However today, at long last, we bagged some trigs.

First off, a nice find just up from the road from A La Ronde. A fascinating building famous for its Victorian occupants and their shell loving exploits; but also architecturally beautiful. Any fancy a building survey for this 16 sided house?

TP6111 - Squirrel

Then a short drive across Woodbury Common in the sun (bliss) to bag this one.


TP7036 - Woodbury Common

I'm going to quickly run out of easy catches in Exeter. Hmmm. I suspect I'm going to have to put more effort into ticking the forthcoming trigs off my list.