Return visit to Harthope Linn

This is a splendid day of warm sunshine. Non-geological highlights include 2 rather torpid adders, one nearly two feet long, crossing our path. There is a fairly long walk through delightful upland birch-alder woodland before crossing a boulder field deposited by floodwaters from the Harthope Burn. We find some rather fine tourmalinised ‘granite’ but, being in the boulder field, it is impossible to tell its origin.
We stop for refreshments at the upper Harthope Linn (waterfall) climbing down to the burn margin. We find a boulder of brecciated rock cemented together by silica. This must have been formed at high temperature, and we would like to believe that it represents part of a volcanic vent. For a 100 square kilometres of andesite to have been poured out, andesite being a fairly viscous lava, there must have been numerous vents during the cycle of active vulcanicity, but their location remains unknown after eons of erosion have destroyed the evidence for them. The problem with this piece of breccia is that it is not clear that it is bedrock and so may have been transported to its present position by ice or water. It also may have been formed by the pressures generated by the Harthope Fault on the line of which it lies.
We walk back down to the lower Harthope Linn just by the stell (circular dry stone sheepfold). There are some interesting rocks in the stream bed. The usual pink granite can be seen adjoining the darker Marginal dioritic variety. There is also some hornfelsed andesite. We would like to believe that this might be evidence for stoping from the andesite roof 400 metres above, but, again, it lies on the Harthope Fault and may have been brought down by earth movements after vulcanicity ceased.