reading rocks

Send a text All of these podcasts are geological but this episode is three-quarters pure rock. First the plan is to look closely at the rock that provided the mortar for the wall – limestone – did the Romans use it to sweeten these northern soils too – they can be pretty acid. Next its more whin Sill – I am starting to wonder if there’s too much on this rock already, but it does play a huge role in the landscape and on Roman plans and they say you can’t get enough of a good thing. The Whin ha...

Send a text Time to descend into and out of one of the classic components of this frontier landscape - one of the "gaps". You have already experienced a few and today there will be a few more. But your legs need a break so we are going to deviate south of the Wall too. To see a ditch, then go find about two mineral resources that were used extensively by the Romans - coal and iron - but what do we know about them.

Send a text We are starting at Bewcastle Fort around 10 kilometres north of Hadrians Wall – well that’s as the crow flies. But then we will be returning the Wall and some of its most dramatic landscapes and archaeology. From a ruined medieval Thirlwall Castle near Greenhead village – built completely of re-purposed Roman stones – we climb up onto the escarpment of the Whin Sill – 295 million years ago it was an intrusion of molten rock that then solidified into a hard rock called dolerite. It...

Send a text Our journey east continues, we are about one and a half kilometres north east of Lanercost just over the line dividing the red St Bees Sandstone bedrock from grey brown Carboniferous rocks – although there is no bedrock to see here – its covered by a variable thickness of glacial deposits. Those thick stony clays sand and gravels may well explain why the first incarnation of Hadrian’s Wall in the western sector was made of earth and turf and not stone. They also mean its essential...

Send a text Series 3 is an extended Hadrian’s Wall rock trail with little side trips and the first episode will start just north of a little seaside town called Maryport on the southern coast of the Solway Firth and head north and then east. We will take in salt making, how the Romans defended an estuary at Burgh Marsh, a large Roman building in Carlisle whose drains have produced a fantastic collection of semi-precious stones - intaglios; and finish at a Roman quarry in a gorge of the ...

Send a text We are so lucky in the north – apart from having far more open space than most people those open spaces have some of the most spectacular landscapes in Britain. Our northern landscapes are a result of our geology and their biodiversity and cultural heritage are profoundly influenced by our geodiversity. How to choose just 7 places to illustrate this? Someone will rightly ask – how could he leave that out!.

Send a text The episode title does have a double meaning – the rocks and deposits that lie beneath us have a very strong controlling influence on what we do to our planet and what we don’t do and what we shouldn’t. They may take time to assert that influence but the fact is that ultimately nature will always win any fight we pick with it. I’m going to be talking about the experiences we humans have in interacting with the ground beneath our feet – the opportunities it presents and the hazards...

Send a text There are so many places across the north of England that show us how the human race has depended on rocks that I felt this topic needed at least 2 episodes. The last episode explored the origins of stone axes, copper, iron and lead ores, coal and graphite. This one visits 6 more places that have examples of very different uses for the geological resources of our planet. First we are off to the City of Durham.

Send a text It is difficult to overstate how dependent we humans are on the resources geology – rocks – provide. It was rock that first provided prehistoric people with shelter and with the raw materials for their tools and weapons, jewellery and pots. Stones built their monuments and the tombs for their dead. Making fire is one of the things that distinguished us humans from animals – we struck two rocks to take that evolutionary step. Our ancestors’ connection with the landscape and its roc...

Send a text This second episode explores those northern rocks that are the domain of palaeontologists – rocks that contain fossils. These remains of lives long ago from sea shells to dinosaurs are one of the three aspects of geology that - along with earthquakes and volcanoes - excite the general public more than any others. How many geologists were seduced into the science by their fascination with these traces of ancient life.

Send a text This first episode of Series two - called a restless north - takes a look at how dynamic our land has been (and still is!). At least once or twice a year we are reminded of the awesome but terrifying power of the planet by catastrophic earthquakes occurring around the globe. Earthquakes happen here too – but on a more subdued level. But we have evidence in the north that they were once rather more assertive. How our rocks have been bent, broken and moved is the challenge of ...

Send a text Part two of this short geo-fiction story looks forward 40 years and 100,000 years. It may be a speculative look into our future but it draws nonetheless on forensic climate projections and impacts which have been generated by reputable scientists. Reading the story of the Earth through its rocks has been likened to reading a book with 90% of its pages missing. An incredible tale and fertile ground for the imagination for sure. But everything in this short story is based on sound s...

Send a text Reading the story of the Earth through its rocks has been likened to reading a book with 90% of its pages missing. An incredible tale and fertile ground for the imagination for sure. But everything in this two-part short story is based on sound scientific, archaeological and historical evidence. Part Two - the final two chapters of the story - may be a speculative look into our future four decades and 100,000 years ahead, but they draw nonetheless on forensic climate projections a...

Send a text Its time to get to grips with how people and rocks connect. And first in ancient societies. So we will be occupying the overlap – more no-mans-land – between geology and archaeology. The two subjects - just like rocks and humans - are inextricably linked. Our ancient ancestors relationship with their natural landscape – that is its rocks – was intimate. Rocks and sediments provided them with shelter, water and tools. It influenced how they used the landscape – their settleme...

Send a text Our tectonic plates continued their erratic waltz north. All the while billions of tonnes of sediments were deposited, turned to rock, tilted up here and there and then eroded away. 60 million years ago lava started to pour out of an enormous rift that was to become the Atlantic Ocean. North America and Europe have been drifting apart ever since. 2.6 million years ago the Earth‘s temperature began to fluctuate again; we cooled and then warmed, repeatedly – the Ice Age – and ...

Send a text This episode starts with injection of molten rock across northern England a rock that is responsible for a huge chunk of our tourist economy. Then it takes a tour of hot deserts, evaporating salty seas, and finally our secret bit of every fossil hunters dream rock. On the way we’ll hear about plots to blow up a famous stone circle, dispose of nuclear waste, a mass global extinction and a more recent awful tragedy. Sounds dismal, but its really not!

Send a text A virtual tour of six rocky places across the north of England that help us understand exactly what the environment was like around 330 million years ago in the Carboniferous period. The land we now call Britain wasn't 55 degrees north then, we were close to the Equator and our landscape alternated between steamy swamps, coastal lagoons, huge lazy rivers, and even coral seas. The story is written in our rocks.

Send a text This is the first episode of the first season of these podcasts. They are based on my five books about northern rocks and their connections with our landscape ….and us. The stories of this first season – Time travelling - begin almost 500 million years ago and end with the Roman conquest of the north. Episode one begins deep in a southern ocean ....and on a hill in the Lake District of England.