South Wales coal geology

Field Geology of the Late Carboniferous Coal Measures Strata in South Wales

Nick Chidlaw has sent me details of a course he is running in late June / early July. It looks rather interesting.

Lifelong Learning 4 day course:

Field Geology & Opencast Mining of Coal in South Wales

Two weekends in late June / earliest July: 23rd / 24th and 30th / 1st July

10.00 am – 5.00 pm each day. 

This course visits impressive locations, both natural and man-made. We study natural exposures and former quarries in river gorges, large-scale working opencasts, a working sandstone quarry, and a disused opencast site. The course enables examination of much of the full stratigraphic extent of the Coal Measures in the main south Wales coalfield, and an appreciation of their deformation (including thrust faulting) during the Variscan Orogeny.

The attached picture shows Margam Opencast (east of Swansea) during the 2000’s. It gives an idea of the scale of these opencast operations and the opportunities they provide to study and collect from strata little-exposed elsewhere.    

Please note you will need to make your own travel and accommodation arrangements (tutor will advise), with meeting times and places to be confirmed.

The course is organised through Cardiff University. It carries assessment, which is very difficult to fail! Attendees usually find assessment on these courses useful for consolidating what they have learned.

Tuition fee is  £165.00 (concessionary fee is available £132.00)

Enrolments can be made by phoning 029  2087  0000 or see website www.cardiff.ac.uk/learn 

For more information on the course content, contact the tutor Nick Chidlaw nickchidlaw@gmail.com