So here I am, standing on the edge of this escarpment in western Libya, miles from anywhere. Up ahead is the surveyor's offsider, standing by a ranging pole.
Unseen, down on the plain (by the white dot of a land rover in yesterday's image, just off to the left of frame in this image) a surveyor is trying to pick up the bearing of the line off this ranging rod so he can continue laying out this line of the survey.
In the foreground, these chunks of rock at the top of the cliff are slowly separating. In the heat of the summer they expand, in the cold of the winter they freeze and every now and then it rains. Each of these events expands the cracks until one day the chunk will snap off and tumble down the cliff.
I'm sure the vibrators, when they came close to the top of the escarpment, did their bit to hasten the separation of some of these chunks but I don't recall any stories of any major separations during my time there.
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