Does your rock talk?

Well yeah it does – but apparently not as much as ours in Torbay! Torbay is a UNESCO Geopark and it is a unique one as we are the only Geopark that has people living, sleeping, going to work, learning, socialising and playing! Daily life and vitally important conservation, a portal into the rock and earth history are deeply bounded in a tapestry of what it means to be human now and for the rest of the earth’s time.

[image description:Grey cloudy sky is reflected in the sea with shimmering sunlight. On the horizon, cruise ships and land on the left. On the right a blue building sits on a curved sea wall. At the bottom, rocks with green sea weed.]

Of course, every place and environment where people live is unique to them. Torbay is special in its way – the legendary drug carpark in Torquay or the Agatha Christie obsession or even the now destroyed hotel which inspired Fawlty Towers! Indeed, I feel a lot of locals would mention the stunning views and tranquility of the sea quite far up there when talking about the bay (the grey giant cruise ships in the background were a point of interest when they arrived but are not a usual feature of Torbay; demonstrating both Covid-19 restrictions and the natural shelter the bay offers for ships of all sizes). All these and more make Torbay a love/hate place to live but let’s delve deeper into geological time and use Torbay’s magnificent environment to tell parts of earth’s history.

I am writing this blog not as an expert or even an enthusiastic amateur, so I am not even beginning to scratch the surface with this Geopark status and what it means fundamentally – please do fact check this all and I encourage you to find out more about this wonderful collective of rock… No, I’m using this blog as a tool to help me embark on a really exciting journey with eight other extraordinary thinkers and artists. Our international cohort will work together over the next few months to ask and maybe even answer questions around the grand, knotty and intriguing title of ‘tech for public good’. This is part of the ground-breaking year of culture happening in Leeds 2023!  I feel truly empowered and honoured to represent Torbay, the Southwest UK. One of our early tasks is to reimagine a ‘field trip’ and take each other beyond time zones of a walking tour of our environment. I am going to do this with the medium of a blog – Hello fellow TFPGers!

I don’t know if you ever met me but walking isn’t really my thing!! I am going to take you on a cycling tour with this mighty beast – Pino! This semi-recumbent piece of German engineering will be piloted by Freetrike’s Hamish and I will be on the front feeding the engine room.

[Image description: Side-on, Hugh sits in a bucket seat with grey trousers and silver helmet, his feet are strapped into pedals. Hamish is in matching top, black shorts and yellow socks sits on a bike saddle. The black Pino has a yellow bag on the back in front of green rolling hills] Photo credit: Ian Derbidge

So, without further a-do, let us time travel. We begin at the Geopark in our Geopark. Within Torbay, there is an adventure playground called the Geopark. It’s fantastic playing frames, sandpits, swings and huts tells the story of time through geology. This child orientated site is divided into four zones all representing the four Geological eras which our represented by the very rock around us – children are literally playing over earth entire history and this wonderful place sees true culture! Let us cycle on to see for ourselves why Torbay tells fundamental chapters in history.

We are cycling towards Brixham and Berryhead which is 400 million years in the making. Five or so years ago, an art insulation had to adapt what it was planning and wait for months before the local authority gave it permission to go ahead on Berryhead because of the local bat population – about 50 years ago, big business was allowed to mine this rock to put into car engines. When we get to Berryhead you can see a large portion at a funny angle where it was blown away to make mining easier. Things have changed for the better to restore nature but ever so slowly! Berryhead is made up of limestone rock or strata – creatures of a bygone era, all squashed together over millions of years. This rock is tough, natural erosion is happening, but very slow.

[Image description: 4 slabs of carefully cut stone seem to balance on top of each other surrounded by green leaves and trees. In big bodd red reads ‘Berry Head’ and underneath in white it reads ‘400 million years in the making’. In between those, smaller blue letters read. ‘NATIONAL NATURE RESERVE. Gateway to the Geopark.’ Bottom left of the scructure are logos.]

Berryhead was formed in the Devonian era and Torbay would have been a very different place. Torbay moved down south when all land was one, when all the rock was connected – Pangea!

[Image description: a basin on green is made up of a great grey wall of rock opposite the camera lens. On top is a wall the same colour against a light, cloudy sky]

This era was named after Devon County herself and allowed for a confusing bit of jigsaw to be fitted into place. Tiny creatures with strong, tough shells would have been floating around and when they died, their armour collected together and was squashed to make layer upon layer. There is so much fascination here for the humble geologist but also a beautiful and peaceful place to have a picnic. For the historian interested in relative human history, there is: one of a few complete examples of a Napoleonic fort, a ww2 placement and cold war bunkers. It is also enjoyed by four legged friends who can be let off the lead!

Back to the peddle we cycle all the way to Torquay! On the way, we see a unusual colour in the rock – dessert red in a chilly autumn day. As Brixham becomes smaller I would like to say how different the next town feels compared to where we have been. The Victorians connected Paignton and Torquay through rail … ww1 to the world, for better or worst (Most definitely probably for worst place I already skipping over to much to even consider this point!) Holiday makers of the middle class verity flocked down in there drones and the super rich started buying up Torquay but Brixham was sheltered from this and the culture is different and I think much richer. There is still systemic discrimination and sense of being left behind but community is in the air and it is strong.

[image description:Red rock with wild greenery scattered around it is offset by grey sky, land and sea to the right. It has railing and a pavement/road to the left]

I think this shows us just extraordinary Pangea was. Through hundreds of millions of years land shifted and Torbay was roughly on the Equator. It was warm – giant millipede type creatures glided across the landscape. The era was called Carboniferous, and that must mean that this rock is over 130 million years old… From then to now, Torbay will be a lush green environment, an ice-cold frozen Narnia and wet, misty bog land.

Travelling past this red giant, we finally make it to Torquay to visit the third main rock type of our geopark. Up one last steep hill, of which there has been quite a lot, we navigate down a twisting side path to Beacon Cove.

[image description: A big black net sits on top of a green covered cliff with grey rock and water below. From there a stony beach with large concrete steps leading down. In the distance lands breaks the horizon with a sea gull flying top left]

This forms the beginning of the Jurassic coast, for miles fossils can be found of those great and small giants, the dinosaurs. We are particularly interested in that jagged grey rock right in the middle of the picture. If you please, I will ignore the elephant in the photo, the abandoned aquarium that was originally built to connect people to the coast. It was an inspirational educational centre, seeing thousands of children pass through and teach them lessons of conservation and waste management with etc. Now it lies abandoned, probably waiting to be converted into hotels or another money sucking…

Anyhoo, let’s turn around and see an amazing piece of artwork to mark the end of our tour.

[image description: below a green covered drop there are planks of wood secured and upright. The wood is painted blue colours with the message ‘it’s ok not to be ok’ in bold blue text with the letters NCS in white. The ‘o’ in not is a sunflower. The far side where the wood stops, a blue rectangle with sea creatures painted on - in yellow reads ‘save our oceans’ Concrete covers a large area but the paint and writing breaks it up.]

Relatively new wooden canvas has graffiti style drawings and text celebrating the ocean and raising awareness of climate change and mental health. The central image is quite chilling actually, an earth on fire, but is all a bit hopeful with handprints as signatures and emojis around. This planned artwork covers up what was once raw graffiti. Swear words, body parts, grim warnings, far right imagery and general anger – I found beauty in the messages and outcry portrayed. Near here, Kents Cavern boasts an important collection of human bones in their cave system. The first evidence of people settling here – cavemen for me conjured up paintings on cave walls, now priceless art. They created images important to them to tell stories and I think the young people’s graffiti, is the really a difference? Yes, crude images aren’t the epiphany of visual arts, but they tell a story that needs to be listened to.

So, from what I’m aware, they are the main geological eras that make Torbay a Geopark… but there are a couple more to be seen.

[image description: a coloured table showing each geological time period from Hadean to Holocene] Source: https://www.digitalatlasofancientlife.org/learn/geological-time/geological-time-scale/

The Holocene is evidenced around us without the need for rock record yet. The epoch is about 10,000 years of human influence on the earth – its roads and coal and concrete. It’s a tiny tiny sliver on billions of years of strata. When we are all gone, this infinitesimal layer of rock is the record of us – our achievements? Our knowledge? Our mistakes?

But now there is a new layer forming - our lasting legacy of distraction, greed and ignorance. We have created a new epoch and it is grim… I’m sorry to have to welcome you to the Anthropocene.

Throughout this 4.6-billion-year journey, the Earth’s rock has shifted in colour and shape, down to natural awe-inspiring events, which capture imagination of child and storyteller alike: ice ages, plants learning to breath, meteors, life forms evolving, volcanoes etc but this new layer is our own doing. The earth is now a nuclear testing site – a catastrophic event to test out utter annihilation is an event close to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs – entirely man-made and probably very pointless. With this, the record of geological time will be plastic, methane, toxic chemicals and all manner of debris that appears in an ecowarrior’s nightmares. It’s there now – if the Devonian level could be eaten like a burger, the layer we created would be smaller than a mm but it will be there and I guess it is up to us to make sure it stays as small as it can be.

Meaningful action is being taken in Torbay: Beach cleans… banning polystyrene single use surf/body boards… initiatives being given the green light to protect Torbay’s Seagrass Beds – An Underwater Forest… young people not taking ‘No’ for an answer on climate justice.

For evermore, Torbay’s rock will tell our story, and despite dedicated and awesome people on the ground/grass roots organisations, the narrative is not looking hopeful…