A Formula For Crossing The Void

Is is February already? It’ll soon be time for me to start getting “beachbody ready”!

On second thoughts, “flabby dad” is already fab! Yes, I’m embarrassing my teenagers. That reminds me of a story many moons ago, when on vacation in Italy, me, my brother and our parents trekked up to the top of Mount Vesuvius with a tour group. From the edge of the volcano, my dad decided to yodel, hoping the caldera would produce an echo. My brother and I looked at each other, mildly embarrassed. From the tour group, a whiney American voice sounded; “You’re embarrassing your teenagers!” I’ve been waiting for my turn ever since.

Speaking of staring down into the volcanic void, I could almost segue to another part of this article, but I’m not going to. I’ve decided to mix things up this month, and we will go with a “Hotspot” feature first.

Hotspot

Actually, it’s an item that was/is “Hot”, though the venue is a hotspot of ours too.

My family occasionally enjoy a wander around the Sainsbury Centre. The walk their through the surrounding grounds of the University of East Anglia is most pleasurable, especially on a sunny day. The centre’s art collection and exhibitions are a draw for art lovers everywhere. I happened upon a few photos taken on my phone of an event in 2013, which celebrated the culture and artistic heritage of East Anglia. The pics aren’t high-end photos because I was preoccupied with ensuring my two little ~~tearaways~~ delights didn’t touch/knock/destroy anything.

I’m not an avid art-lover and I’m certainly not knowledgeable, but I do enjoy and appreciate art. And this item on display, to me, was a masterpiece. The iconic Lotus 72 means a lot to Formula One fans as it was the car that changed the shape of F1 vehicles, and it was the model that took Emerson Fittipaldi to a double (team and driver) world championship. But for me, it was a flashback to childhood. Even though it was from a time before I was born, it held memories, in all likelihood because subsequent Lotus F1 cars retained the black and gold colour scheme. To put it mildly, it just looked cool.

I also consider the Marlboro-sponsored McLaren cars of yesteryear almost as iconic, but at the time, I was not aware of the smoking sponsorship of F1 cars. It’s a shame we weren’t allowed to sit in the car, though the temptation would be somehow to start revving the engine. Performance art – Now that would’ve been cool.

Iconic Lotus 72 John Player Special racing car @ Sainsbury Centre Norwich

Volcanic Void

I’m nothing if not adaptable. Right at the last moment I’ve opted against my planned article, instead writing something right off the cuff. I felt the article I was going to write (which was going to be called “The Call of the Void”) wasn’t quite right for this column. However, I’ve kept the “void” part of the title, and on an absolute whim contemplated Norfolk’s volcanic past, even though I didn’t know if there is such a thing!
Disclaimer – I have no experience in geology or any other relevant field. I’m just armed with a search engine and local knowledge. So, don’t get too excited – This is just a bit of fun!

A quick check on Wikipedia’s list of extinct volcanoes in the United Kingdom, and we can see there is no current, dormant or extinct volcanoes near Norfolk. So, nope, no volcanoes here. Pretty anticlimactic, huh? Okay, Norfolk isn’t as flat as people make out*, but the scenery doesn’t exactly resemble the landscape of Iceland, for example, so it’s kind of obvious there is unlikely to be any history of volcanic activity.

*In the Noel Coward play, Private Lives, one of the characters says “Very flat, Norfolk.”

Still. It would be wrong to rule it out completely. After all, we’re talking about 4.5 billion years of history. So, clutching at straws, what could look like signs of a volcanic landscape in Norfolk? Well, according to Earthwise, the digital publication channel for the British Geological Survey in a discussion of the basement rocks around North Norfolk states, “thin layers of volcanic lavas have also been found in some boreholes. There may be a single granite intrusion in the area north of Fakenham based on the gravity and magnetic data,” though this is just an interpretation of data.

Let’s move on to the visual landscape, and two places in particular. Diss Mere and Beeston Bump. The town of Diss takes its name from Disce, the Saxon word for a pool of standing water. Folklore suggests that the Diss Mere is a caldera from a collapsed volcano. The Diss Town Council website says, “according to ancient folklore, the Mere was a bottomless pit formed in the crater of an extinct volcano. Geology, however, suggests it was formed by a glacier retreat back in the last Ice Age.” The mere is certainly circular like a volcano would be, but that’s as far as the similarity goes. It’s a nice place to visit, but it is not a volcano.

So, to the beach! If you know what you’re looking for you may find volcanic stone fragments on Norfolk’s beaches, however, they have come from further afield, from places such as Scotland, Wales, Scandinavia. Oh, and quite possibly even from the rocks used for Norfolk’s sea defences. And at the coast is one of my favourite features; The Beeston Bump! I like to imagine it’s a future volcano waiting to explode, but it’s not. Along with the rest of the 9-mile Cromer Ridge, it was formed by glaciers, during the last Ice Age. Fun fact: Whilst researching for this article, I discovered there were Pastonian, Beestonian, Cromerian phases of the early Pleistocene stage (the Ice Age). Pardon the pun, but that’s pretty cool!

I couldn’t finish without leaving with you a Norfolk “volcano”. Here’s one NorfolkPlaces “discovered”. Like the Lotus 72 picture, these also date from 2013!

A volcano at UEA in 2013 to celebrate UEAs 50th anniversary

In 2013, the UEA celebrated its 50th year, and as part of the celebrations they created a fireworks volcano. There were thousands of people standing on the side of a hill, jostling to get a glimpse, and the pictures were taken on mobile phone. NorfolkPlaces put together a video of the some of images and some shaky camera phone footage. You can see it alongside all other NorfolkPlaces videos here.