A Trip to Gubbio
In which Elliott drags Chris across two countries in search of some rocks.
Inspired by Walter Alvarez' excellent book, T. rex and the Crater of Doom and a desire to escape the cacophony of Basel's Easter Fasnacht festival, my friend Elliott invited me to join him on a trip to Gubbio. There he hoped to see the K-T boundary beds that first inspired Alvarez to search for the truth about the last great mass extinction our planet suffered.
We met in Zurich.
After overnighting in Zurich, we made the long journey south through Milan, finally reaching Florence before we gave up for the day. A brief tour of the sights and bars of Florence and a few hours' sleep in the beautiful Grand Hotel Baglioni and we were on our way again, on the wrong train.
After discovering our mistake and returning to Florence, we located the right train and set off once more. A few more hours by train and two transfers found us in Perugia, where we caught a local service to Gubbio. The closest station to Gubbio is 22Km from the city of Gubbio itself, but a bus service runs from the front of the Fossato/Gubbio station to the city itself, taking just 20 minutes. Once there we immediately went in search of the Gola del Bottaccione.
Armed only with our book and some sketchy knowledge gleaned from web pages we'd read before we set off, we wandered uphill in search of a likely road.
The key to finding the beds was not to find the right road, but to find the river. Once we'd found the river, we followed it upstream until we reached the gate in the city walls, and then out into the Gola del Bottaccione, where we could clearly see the aqueduct tracing along the right-hand side of the valley. From the city walls it was a fifteen minute walk to the K-T beds.
After a thoughtful pause at the beds themselves, we made our way back down the valley to Gubbio and found ourselves rooms at the very fine Hotel Ducal, mission accomplished.
The townspeople of Gubbio had very thoughtfully closed all restaurants for the night, it being a Monday.
The following day, all that was left was the long haul back to Zurich, with an overnight stay in the beautiful canton capital of Bellinzona.
T. rex and the Crater of Doom
I highly recommend this book. It's honest, informative, thought-provoking and packed with all of the background you need to appreciate the subject, while somehow managing to remain extremely accessible. Enough superlatives, if you're interested you can buy T. rex and the Crater of Doom at Amazon.
Related links
- Gubbio, by Elliott Hughes.
- The K-T Boundary at Gubbio, by Smith Powell.
- The K/T Boundary.
- The Living Word of God.