Winter Indoor Meetings

No program in place.

Indoor Meetings 2025-2026

• October 17^th – Groundwater in the geological context – an overview and, The Geology of Newfoundland Part 2
• November  21^st – Measuring the Movement (Tracking the movements of Tectonic Plates),  Geology En Route  - a short presentation and, The Geology of Newfoundland Part 2  - completed from earlier talks
• December 19^th - Christmas Lunch and Visiting Speaker presentation: An overview of the Falkland Islands
• January 16^th - What Professional  Geologist do (IIb) and, Fossils in Geology –  Molluscs
• February 20^th Mass Extinctions –Why a Reassessment and,  Fossils in Geology – The Evolution of Vertebrates and Plants
• March 20^th - (Member’s short talk – to be confirmed) and, Groundwater – finding, exploiting, conserving and protecting groundwater resources.

Summer Outdoor meetings / Field Trips

Summer season runs from April to September when we make a variety of outdoor visits/field trips to look at geology. These are usually also on the third Friday of each month, although the leader for each trip is free to choose a day based on tide conditions, weather etc. Field trips are usually a full day, with a pub/packed lunch. Accessibility descriptions are included in the field trip notes. We generally walk no further than a mile each way from the cars to the geology locations and try to keep to paths, beaches and reasonable underfoot conditions (no mountaineering). Occasionally we will do a longer walk of up to 4 miles. We occasionally organise two day trips with an overnight stay to allow us to explore the geology of areas further from Hexham. These are very sociable events where we aim to stay together and have dinner in a reasonably priced hotel close to the location of the geology sites.

Summer Program 2026

No program in place for Summer 2026.

Review of outdoor meetings and field trips Summer 2025

In May the Geology group were invited to join the Northern Rocks Group for their visit to the lead and zinc mine at Nenthead. This was a fascinating excursion looking at both the above ground geology of Carboniferous rocks incised by the Nenthead River close to the mine, and a visit underground to the old mine workings. The trip was led by the volunteer geologists at the Nenthead Mines Conservation Society who were able to give very detailed information about the geology and industrial archaeolgy relating to the mining complex.

In July the group visited several geological sites in the Solway Basin area led by one of our own members. Meeting up in the small town of Langholm, sitting on the river Esk in the Scottish Southern Uplands, we travelled in a southerly direction - generally following the geological succession. Starting just south of Langholm we looked at exposures of the Silurian greywacke basement, presumed to extend under the Northumberland-Solway Basin, the basin margin fault and early Carboniferous Birrenswark lavas from the extension-rifting phase – the birth of the basin. Moving on to the Penton Bridge area we looked at Carboniferous Yoredale cycles, with fossiliferous limestones, mudstones, siltstones, sandstones and coals. We will also explored the basin inversion fold and faults visible here with the river cutting through a clear anticlinal structure. At a site on the Taras Water burn tributary of the Esk, we were able to see a very clear exposure of banded lower-Carboniferous sediments that would be hidden by several kilometres of rock underneath the Northumberland Trench deposits back in our home county of Northumberland. Finally further down the Esk, near the town of Canonbie, we were able to see, not just the beginning of red-orange PermoTriassic strata that is much in evidence further south and west in the basin, but earlier Carboniferous ‘red beds’ of sandstone.

The group’s final field trip of the 2025 summer season was a two day residential excursion to the Trossachs area based in the town of Callander, where we stayed in a comfortable hotel for two nights. During this trip, the group visited three principal geological sites that were selected to give a better understanding of the Highland Boundary Fault structure and associated rock types. The first site visited was Balmaha, located on the South East bank of Loch Lomond. Here the line of the Fault, which runs continuously from the North East of Scotland coast near Stonehaven, across central Scotland just north of the Highland Line of hills and disappears under the Loch.  It continues on the other side of the Loch to the south west towards Arran. Walking along the shore of the Loch, northwards out of Balmaha, the variety and complexity of some of the rocks around the Fault was revealed. The second main site visited was the abandoned Limecraig Quarry to the north of the town of Aberfoyle. This site reveals strata that provide fine examples of the Border Fault Complex – a unique and varied set of rocks that can help to provide an understanding of how the Fault started and developed, back in the earl Palaeozoic geological era. Finally the group walked the Bracklinn Falls circuit north of the town of Callander. Here the rocks are entirely in the Old Red Sandstone group and are south of the Boundary Fault line but they demonstrate the extreme faulting and folding that took place in these rocks, derived from the Border Fault movements. The Allt á Choire Bhric stream (also known as Keltie Water) flows through the Bracklin Falls steep and rocky gorge.

Click this link for a BRIEF REVIEW OF 2023/24:
(October 2023 – September 2024)

Guidelines for organising a field trip