When I moved to Cheltenham, I was stunned by my lovely view upon a large, brooding hill, which I soon discovered was Cleeve Hill. Every morning, while making my porridge, I would gaze over toward to hill, where some days there would be clouds rolling over, racing towards me, bringing rain and misery. Other days, it would be clear.
Today was a surprisingly warm day, for February at least. In fact, it got so warm, I had to take my jumper off (it got colder later so I put it back on, admittedly). But today was the perfect day to embark on my Cleeve Hill climb. To be authentic, I had embarked on this journey twice prior, but there were some issues. The first time, it was so muddy, that every step up the hill ended with me slipping back down two steps. The second time, we noticed some particularly scary looking clouds engulf the hill entirely, very quickly, so we scuttled back home. But this time, I was determined. No matter the circumstance, I was not backing down.
Cleeve Hill is in fact the highest point of the Cotswolds (and also the highest point in the drainage basin of the Thames), standing at 1,083ft (303 metres) above sea level. The rock that Cleeve Hill is comprised of was laid down in the mid Jurassic period, around 170 million years ago, and is abundant in fossils. These rocks were formed from sediment that was produced when Britain had a warm tropical climate. The abundance of these fossils really represent how these ancient seas were teeming with sea life. Cleeve's geology and ecology is so interesting that it is considered a Site of Special Scientific Interest! Across the hill there are various outcrops of rock where prior extensive quarrying had taken place, however these slopes now are full of amazing rock specimens.
On the subject of fossils, the rock was entirely comprised of tiny little ancient shells, which made it quite light and somewhat bubbly. Over our trip, we found mostly fossils of shells, and parts of larger shell within the rock, a resemblance of it's tropical underwater past. Really significant fossils have been discovered over this way, such as fragments of teeth that resemble some kind of crocodile or shark. But we weren't expecting to find anything of that sort. We did, however find what could (emphasise the 'could', I am not a palaeontologist) be a fossilised fish fin or part of it's tail. For a very long time, I have been searching for fossils, it seems I do not have an eye for them. Every other kid seemed to have found a fossil apart from me, so this was kind of a big deal.
My prior research of Cleeve Hill's geology suggested there would be no interesting minerals or crystals to find. But that was not good enough for me to not at least look. I'm not sure whether I was in luck, or whether the source of that information was a trick from other crystal collectors to divert them from their crystal hotspots, but I found at least something. It turns out Cleeve is quite the place to collect little mineral specimens.
During my day trip, I found many tiny druzy quartz pockets on the scree slopes, and even some slightly larger terminations of quartz. In total, I spent around 2 hours on the field, sorting through the rubble and climbing over the outcrops (this could be dangerous, so beware). There were of course a lot of rocks which didn't catch our eye, however, I've never picked up so many tiny druzy pieces in my life. There were definitely some spots that proved better than others in terms of the amounts of crystals we found (or the amount that we could actually extract). There were some bits of quite larger terminations which were stuck in some harder rock, which we couldn't extract without damaging the entire ecosystem of the world (a little overdramatic, it was just difficult and we didn't want to leave a lot of damage). My advice would be to sort through the unconsolidated rock before searching in the rock faces, as that is where we found most of our extraordinary specimens. Looking and breaking apart the rock faces can be quite harmful to the ecosystem, and the ecology over Cleeve Hill is extremely valuable.
Despite this particularly dreary image of a lonesome bench that I had found on my hike, it was actually a lovely day, considering it's February. It hit around 12°C in Cheltenham today, and was quite breezy in some parts, but it felt a lot warmer when in more protected parts of the hill. We're going through a lovely high pressure system bringing warm, sunny spells throughout England and Wales. It is a really good day to make use of the weather safely, by sanitising regularly, wearing facemasks in busier areas and keeping 2 metres (6 feet) apart from anyone outside of your household.
Where is your best site to find fossils in the UK?
Brilliant finds, very jealous :)