Pootler

  Brass Point nr. Beachy Head 'The Chalk' hills surround London and the Thames Valley, with rolling downland, capped with pure white stone. The bleached clean bones of old England,  Tolkien's Barrow Downs.   Wonderful stuff.  There aren’t many places in the world where pure chalk rises to the surface and England is blessed with the largest proportion of them.  If you are walking, it is usually dry and springy underfoot and on a bike the slopes are merciful. Cretaceous Earth It's origins are described in the first two posts in my 'Deep Past' series; Links: ' From Hell to High Water '  and ' Coming Up For Air '. It crops up again in my musings on local stone.  Mud   A short reprise. The white chalk of the downland has its origins at the bottom of an ancient sea at  around the latitude of what is now North Africa. It was a long way from land and as deep as the scarps hills are now high. Sharks swam in it, crabs scuttled along the bed and coiled carn