Ice Age sediments in Inniscarra and Ballincollig As described earlier, it is difficult to spot proper sedimentary deposits from the Ice Age/Quaternary Period in Cork City. That being said, there are loads of it underneath the Lee Valley. Unfortunately, it is buried under soils, vegetation and human infrastructure. In other locations these deposits are visible as unsorted sediments of various sizes filled in crevasses and cracks of the Carboniferous limestone. However, there are some locations where Quaternary sediments can be seen and studied to a greater extent.
Ballincollig Regional Park looking west: The rise in the landscape at the sides is due to the Old Red Sandstone making up the foundation there, while the lower landscape of the middle marks the Carboniferous sedimentary rocks. The picture below is of an outcrop in Ballincollig Regional Park . Travelling along the Lee Road from Cork there is a fuel station sitting right at the foot of a towering Old Red Sandstone hill. Behind the fuel station building itself there is an exposed outcrop of messy sediments of pebbles, cobbles, sand and mud. These sediments are from the Quaternary Period or, more informally, from the Ice Age. As mentioned earlier, Cork was covered by these ice sheets but, as the climate warmed, they started to melt about 13,700 years ago. Meltwater from these huge volumes of ice turned into rivers that washed sediments down into what was the Lee Valley at that time. These flows of meltwater were strong and carried rocks and sediments of all sizes along, eventually leaving them as thick sedimentary layers throughout the area.
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