Welcome to the next chapter of Nightjar’s series about exploring the hills near her home in Portugal.
Chapter 2 – East Hill: Limestone Rocks!
Limestone may not be the prettiest of rocks, but I really like rocks, and images such as this make me happy. The other side of this limestone formation, facing a neighbouring village, is currently being explored for cement production. On “our” side there is only evidence of the work of stonemasons who used to sculpt the rock in place and carry their works downhill. Word has it that some people have found sculptures among the piles of rocks on the top of the hill, but I never found anything. Just rocks, really.
©Nightjar, all rights reserved
©Nightjar, all rights reserved
©Nightjar, all rights reserved
But I found some other treasures. Crystals! Of calcium carbonate! Don’t ask me if this is calcite or something else, I’m not an expert on this stuff.
©Nightjar, all rights reserved
©Nightjar, all rights reserved
And then I found this rock with some shiny crystals on the surface and maroonish stripes. I don’t know what those stripes are, but they’re interesting.
©Nightjar, all rights reserved
In the next chapter we will continue looking at rocks. Like good sedimentary rocks that they are, they have a story to tell us.
Thanks, Nightjar.
Pretty rocks.
Those stripes look like ferrous oxide on quartz.
I think the limestone looks rather nice. It might just be that it looks different, since there isn’t much of it right around where I live. We have lots of granite and other igneous rocks, though!
Ooo, pretty! I want to touch them all and put them in my pockets.
I like the maroon stripes, and I know they had a name to them, but it has slipped my mind. But the colour contrasts are lovely.
Ooh, shiny. The crystals and stripes are lovely.
Hm, after reading Charly and rq‘s comments and googling a bit I wonder if those are iron oxide dendrites or something like that? Damn, I knew I should have brought that rock with me for further investigation, but it wasn’t pocket-sized and I still had a lot of climbing to do.
springa73
I love granitic landscapes! Where I live it’s mostly sedimentary and metamorphic rocks (I’ll get to those in the last chapters of this series). Granite is actually not that far away, but it’s a 2-hour drive to get there.