The stuff Britain’s made of
Britain is home to some of the world’s most varied and beautiful landscapes, and it’s all down to the stuff underfoot. Time to walk, and wonder...
Ever wondered why our countryside packs so much diversity in such a small space? It’s amazing luck!
IF BRITAIN WERE a chef’s creation it would be the most fantastical Willy Wonka confection. The bizarrest mix of ingredients, the most complicated cooking process, an improbable but astonishingly successful result. Never mind your thrice-cooked chips Mr Blumenthal, what about a dish baked, frozen, boiled, ground, folded, faulted, crushed, crystallised, shattered, spewed, drowned, decayed, preserved, transformed, acid etched? Can we interest Sir in a side of Silurian greywacke? A little schist? A soupçon of oolite?
Britain brings all of this and more to the table after an epic journey of aeons – starting near the South Pole 700 million years ago and including a collision en route which brought the northern and southern parts of the nation together, after beginning life on different continents separated by an ancient ocean. Today Britain contains rocks as old as 3000 million years and sinkholes as young as yesterday. You can travel millions of years in the course of a half-day’s drive. To a geologist it’s a dizzying prospect – and it is to us too. Because what’s under your feet is responsible for the smorgasbord of landscapes we’re fortunate to live among. An enormous variety of ingredients has gone into them. And there’s nothing like discovering more of how they shape the different views and moods of our walks – and the enormity and wonder of the processes behind them – to quicken your appetite for an adventure.u