Tag Archives: boundaries

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Bellyside Crag and Upper Goldscleugh Sike

We buy a 10.00 GBP day permit from Savills, Glendale Road, Wooler and drive up the College Valley to Dunsdale where we start our walk up Bellyside Hill. The purpose of the expedition is to examine the granitic rock at the northern end of the pluton at Bellyside Crag which is classified by Al-Hafdh and by previous writers as ‘Marginal’ like the rock of Cunyon Crag and Dunmoor Hill on the south east side of the pluton. We also hope to find and examine the andesite outlier mapped at the head of Goldscleugh to see if it gives any clues as to its relationship with the pluton.

Bellyside Hill

View from Bellyside Hill looking up towards Goldscleugh Sike
The ground behind is the summit plateau of the Cheviot.

Bellyside Hill is Cheviot’s closest approximation to a classic ridge walk. Until about 600m there is a good path passing a series of granitic tors on the way. These are composed of a granitic but in appearance mafic rock with occasional felsic intrusions of pink rock.
At about 600m the path disappears and the only way forward is through tiresome blanket bog vegetation.

View looking north down Bellyside Hill showing the outcropping tors

View looking north down Bellyside Hill showing the outcropping tors

View looking north down Bellyside Hill showing the outcropping tors

A felsic phase or dyke in one of the tors on Bellyside Hill

Upper Goldscleugh reveals some rather heavily altered rock which may possibly be andesite, but it occurs as scattered blocks and pebbles, so it is impossible to determine any relationship with the pluton. If it is indeed andesite, its altered state indicates that it must have originated from close to the pluton contact.

We now tramp over to Bellyside Crag. This turns out to be composed of a mafic granitic rock similar to that found on the tors of Bellyside Hill.
The screes around the crag have a large colony of clubmosses.

Thin section of rock from Bellyside Crag viewed with crossed polars at X40

Thin section of rock from Bellyside Crag viewed with crossed polars at X40
Granophyric texture can be seen in several places. There is a large crystal of clinopyroxene at the bottom of the picture.

Subsequent thin section analysis reveals some interesting facts. The rocks of Bellyside Hill and Bellyside Crag are very similar to each other although the Bellyside Hill specimens may have a slightly higher proportion of alkali feldspar. However, neither are anything like the ‘Marginal’ rock of Dunmoor Hill and Cunyon Crag.
The Bellyside Hill specimens have a lower proportion of plagioclase to alkali feldspar (identifiable feldspars show a ratio of about 1:2, plagioclase to alkali feldspar); there is very little biotite, the main mafic mineral being pyroxene (10-15%); quartz content is similar at about 20%. It also has a more marked fine matrix than the southern Marginal with frequent granophyric texture.
It therefore seems rather doubtful that it has the same origin as the southern Marginal rock.

As regards the “andesite” of upper Goldscleugh Sike, if we are correct in identifying this as a granite/andesite contact, both the andesite and granite show clear signs of banding which may indicate contact compression.
Apart from the contact on Shiel Cleugh Edge, this is the only evidence for kinematic action which we have found on Cheviot. Where it exists it appears to be very localised. However, we remain rather uncertain whether the rock from upper Goldscleugh Sike was andesite or just an altered granitic rock.

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Dunmoor Hill

We go to Dunmoor Hill in search of Al-Hafdh’s hitherto elusive chilled margins. Dunmoor Hill is a particularly good site as exposure, unlike in many areas of the Cheviot hills, is plentiful. We are finding Al-Hafdh’s thesis on the Cheviot pluton immensely stimulating. It has provided clear direction to our own research, although we are beginning to doubt his proposal that the Cheviot pluton consisted of a series of ring dykes.
The area below Cunyon Crags has plenty of small outcrops where we find a bewildering mixture of felsic and mafic fine-grained material. At first, we think that the mafic rock is altered andesite. However, thin sections show very well-developed granophyric texture in the felsic rock which imply late intrusion into already established plutonic bodies. The mafic rock has a very high biotite/opaque iron oxide content, and appears to be restite.
Subsequently, we are able to trace the junction between the pink rock (Al-Hafdh’s Dunmoor type) and the more mafic Marginal rocks right across the south slope of Dunmoor Hill. The junction doesn’t show a clear cut boundary but it does present frequent inter-penetration of the two types. The implication is that neither type was fully consolidated when the intrusion took place.
We are still unable to find any chilled margins to confirm an intrusion sequence. Finer rocks always turn out to be aplite veins or small dykes.

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Al-Hafdh, Linhope Spout and Linhope Burn

We have discovered Al-Hafdh’s 1985 PhD thesis on the alteration petrology of the Cheviot pluton and we’ve decided to chart and verify his rock types.
He claims to have found a series of chilled margins which establish the sequence of the various intrusions.
So, we make an excursion to the Linhope area where we find no convincing evidence for chilled margins but we do find the junction between Al-Hafdh’s Marginal and Dunmoor varieties just above Linhope Spout.
The ‘Felsite’ dyke marked on the 1” OS map at the top of Linhope Spout turns out to be a wider than normal version of the aplite veins which are frequent in the Cheviot pluton. This aplite dyke probably accounts for the hardness of the rock which has caused the waterfall feature.
About 100m up stream there is a slight cliff (about 5m high) at the junction between the pink granite and the marginal. This contains significant quartz veining, lending weight to the theory that hydrothermal activity took place along lines of weakness between the two types. Thin sections from this area reveal red crystals in the quartz which we first identified as rutile but now think more likely to be hematite.
Up stream to NT 94694 17249, we find a course-grained porphyritic rock in the streambed which Al-Hafdh classified as ‘Linhope’ granodiorite. We are not convinced by his differentiation of this from ‘Standrop’ granodiorite, and can not find evidence for a chilled margin between them.

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Woolhope Crag and the Cheviot

We go to see if the theory of the darker rocks making tougher landscape features, would hold at Woolhope Crag (NT 92264 22169).
The answer was ambiguous. There is certainly plenty of dioritic rock there but there is also a pale fine-grained granophyric rock. We subsequently made our way up the north slopes of the Cheviot, and found plenty of scattered exposures which revealed more of the granophyric rock. We have classified this type on the map as ‘Evolved’ granite.
Descending from Cheviot summit on the main path for Langlee in the Harthope valley, we found distinct quartz veining with tourmaline content (approx. NT 918 209). There is the possibility that this quartz veining is the result of hydrothermal penetration on lines of weakness between different types of plutonic rock.
We need to pay another visit to investigate this.