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The Legend
Talkin Tarn was in the midst of a storm when an outsider came to the village
looking for shelter. She was turned away from every door.
But the villagers hadn't realised that the stranger was a witch and as
she walked down the hill, she turned and said: "May you be flooded".
And so there was a flood and the tarn was formed.
The Bells
The legend says that a church was buried under the tarn and on midsummer
night, church bells can be heard ringing.
The True
story
Talkin Tarn
is a glacial basin that was formed about 18,000 years ago.
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Rolling
hills surrounding the tarn
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A huge ice
sheet over in the west moved eastwards up through the Tyne gap, gouging
out deep basins in the ground, particularly where the bedrock was weak
shale (stone that is soft and splits easily).
Engulfed
We know the glacier was travelling east, as the rolling hills surrounding
Talkin Tarn are elongated eastwards. This shows that the glacier was moving
in that direction. Some of the hills may have risen above the moving glacier,
while others will have been entirely engulfed by it.
Grinding
As the cold,
hard top of the glacier was grinding away, it was actually melting underneath
and materials were being deposited as it travelled. The weaker shales
in the bedrock would have been gouged out, filled in, gouged out and filled
in several times over a long period and as deglaciation started, that
is when the outwash gravels would have run all over the area forming the
current landscape.
Hole
The tarn has a maximum depth of 15 metres. Under the water it is shallow
for quite a while and then drops off very deeply to a big hole. The shallow
flatter part of the lake bed would have been an earlier water level, which
means the lake has been smaller.
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The
flat horizons that will probably have been an earlier water level
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Earlier
water levels
The water
level has shallowed over time and if you look inland, you can see flat
levels of ground around the tarn that used to be the shoreline. This means
the tarn would have been considerably fuller in the past and this was
when it was probably full of run off water from the glaciers.
Lowered
The water will have lowered over time due to the water seeping through
the ground, evaporation and natural run off. It has settled down over
thousands of years to the level it is today.
The tarn
is now fed by underground springs from the north Pennines.
Soil
After the
glacier melted 12,000 years ago, the tremendous outwash, the gravels and
the sands formed the hills surrounding the tarn. This is why much of the
soil around the tarn is sandy and boldery and very low in nutrients.
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Six
different varieties of stone found in a small area. The pen is to
show the size of the stones
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The wide
variety of stones found around the edge of the tarn is evidence that the
ice was travelling eastwards and washing the different stones along with
it.
Stones
Among the
rocks found were Skiddaw slate and Penrith sandstone. These are both stones
from the west of Talkin Tarn and this indicates that the ice has passed
over these areas and dragged these stones with it.
Among the
stones are jagged bits and rounded bits which is typical of glacial outwash
material.
Horizons
In the woodland on the hillside, there are horizons formed where the
ground has eroded and an overhanging ledge has been left. Here you can
see the different layers under the ground.
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A
horizon in the woods
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The top layer
is undecayed leaf (the A Horizon) and the deeper you look, you can see
the different levels of decayed material, to well decayed at the bottom.
Decay
Under the decaying materials there are hard pieces of sand that have been
cemented together by the nutrients that have been sucked out of the decaying
material and reprecipitated underneath. The result is sand that looks
like sandstone, but crumbles when touched.
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