to cast the sandwich

I spent much of December packing up my belongings and sending them off to storage; with the New Year I flew to Sweden to visit friends and do some travel. This evening I learned a delightful phrase "kasta macka", which means to "cast the sandwich", or to "skip rocks". However, in this case, the "sandwich" referred to is the flat, sedimentary rocks which have weathered into stones which are perfect for skipping across the surface of a body of water when thrown at the correct angle.

The rocks under St. Andrew's

I enjoyed another visit to Scotland last week. While there I went up to St. Andrew's, home of the third-oldest English-speaking University in the world. In addition to a noteworthy University, the town's other tourist attractions include the ruins of a castle and a cathedral.

These first two photos show what is left of the castle up at the ground level.

Here is the view from the beach, looking up at the castle.

This is the cliff just to the left of the castle, showing the sedimentary rock upon which the castle is built.

This is a tunnel under the castle. During a siege the attackers dug a mine, hoping to get under the walls and blow them up. But the folks in the castle heard them digging, dug a counter mine, and managed to fend off the attackers in the tunnel.

Here is a view through the walls down onto the beach, showing more of the sedimentary rocks below.

While the rocks in this part of Scotland aren't as pretty as the metamorphic rocks in the interior of the country, still it was fun to see the interaction of the human history and the geology.