Northern Spain

The Cordillera Cantábrica of Northern Spain Provide some impressive scenery
and contain some excellent outcrops of many different rocks.  The author has
visited locations in the vicinity of Lavid and Villa Simplez on the river Bernesga,
in the Principality of León.  In this area there are many very good quality outcrops
of shallow marine sedimentary rocks of Cambrian to Devonian age* which display
clear sedimentary structures such as bedding as well as structural features such
as folds and cleavage.  Fossils are also present in some outcrops including compound
coral, crinoids, stromatalites, bivalves and graptolites (eg. monograptus).

* If you are very lucky you might find some good, although brittle, plant fossils in
rocks that were deposited in intermontaine basins in the Sephanian.  The author
has found a few such specimens but the rocks were loose among scree in a
water erosion gully (possibly a shear zone or fault).

The picture above was taken just to the east of Villa Simplez, facing east.
The ridge on the horizon is the hard, erosion-resistant Barrios Orthoquartzite.
Below the Barrios the La Vid Limestone outcrops.

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