March 22, 2015
In the limestone quarries there may be up to ten feet long fossil of ordoceratiter, an octopus who lived during the Ordovician of about 450 million years ago. When the sea was 30-40 meter deep here. Have no expectation of finding such fossils as we exit the car in the parking to Listarum Ridge Nature Reserve on the road between Smedstorp and St. Olaf.

Following Gårdlösa trail east. A stile leads into an enclosed field. Between two stone walls into the woods. Many Yellow Star-of-Bethlehem who is about to bloom. There is the ruin of a lime kiln. At that grows hepatica, they are not really blooming yet. On the bridge over a river, past a picnic area and on the ridge above a pond. Appearing on a grass road, after a short distance is a stile in a pasture. A sign informs that in there is a disbanded limestone quarry. The limestone was broken and carted to Ignaberga to become cement.

A great quarry and a little smaller. Take lunch at the lesser. In the great quarry are steep sides. Looking for fossils in among the rocks on a ledge. On the one side you can with little trouble getting down. Slide among the loose stones. Looking for fossils in them. Find nothing. It's beautiful down there. In the eastern part is a narrow gauge with remnants of a railway where the stone was transported out. Go up and continues the grass road south to a small quarry, Kalvahagen quarry.

Not so much, a pile, a body of water and a wall. Goes back to the big quarry to locate another limestone quarry, follows the remains of the narrow gauge railway to the east. The rails remain. Halt at a house. Do not want to cross the house, go back, crossing a pasture, step over a fence into a field. Take a short cut across the field to the dams north of the house. The ponds are remnants of a limestone quarry. Stone shards cover the beaches. Looking again after fossils, twist and turn stone pieces. Perhaps? In any case, the idea boggles the mind that there may be remains of animals that lived in the sea 450 million years ago. Goes back, Coffee at the lime kiln.

Map