Lomography

Growing Old on an Island

The rocks which form the land mass of cornwall are a small part of the "variscan" belt of strata which extends across europe from the edge of the carpathian mountains in northern bohemia, eastwards througfh germany and belgium beneath younger rock of east anglia and wessex and on into the south west including devon and cornwall where the same belt passes southwards from cornwall to brittany, via Massif Central, into Northern Spain and Galicia possibly the Basque lands are also connected by this geophysical phenomenom.Although the rocks vary considerably in each location, a common feature of parts of the Variscan belt is the presence of folded strata such as slate, together with locally extensive granite masses.This association is the product of a period of violent earth movements that occoured some 300 million years before the present, when two continental masses were in collision along an extensive common boundary.The period of compression that resulted in the folding and fracturing of the earths crust and also in melting of the deeper crust was followed by an uplift of the eras when the area that is now cornwall and south west england was an arid desert in equatorial latitudes. the grey slate and crystaline granite that are seen around the coasts and in inland quarries in present day cornwall represent the roots of the former mountaian ranges exposed by deep erosion.