Explore every episode of the podcast reading rocks

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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.

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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 resisted erosion by 1000m thick ice sheets and stands proud as one of the rocky icons of the northern landscape. 

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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 to look at the building and wall stones to see get a feel for the bedrock. 

You could abandon the car and walk between the places in the 4 stories in this episode from Hare Hill to Appletree, Harrows Scar and Willowford Bridge. Its only around 8 km one way, pretty flat with great views and some brilliant archaeology including passing Birdoswald Fort. The dedicated Romanists and hikers amongst you could take in the Fort and the Roman inscriptions at Combcrag gorge on the way back - you’ll maybe remember that from Series 2.

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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 River Eden at a place called Wetheral. You could always follow along on Google Maps and maybe even get the car or bike or boots out and do it for real !

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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!. 

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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 it poses, ones that can be mitigated and ones that in any practical sense, can’t. 

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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.

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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 rocks was deep and all-pervasive.

They recognised the hardness and sharp edges of flint, chert and quartz for cutting tools. The durability of hard rocks for hammers and axes. Stones with the right roughness were used for milling grain or sharpening tools. Rocks with layers were skilfully split into slabs and panels. Clay was used everywhere to make pottery. 

Local ores were prospected, mined and smelted and then turned into weapons, utensils and ornaments. Coal and peat were exploited as fuels for homes and industry. Rocks permeated early societies’ rituals and aesthetics: white gypsum on henges, ochre and hematite as pigments. The fact that these stones were traded so widely and valued so highly underlines their esteem.

It’s tempting to think humans are less dependent on rocks today but we are not, we just use far more of them differently. From the environmental pariahs: coal, oil and gas; to the steel, copper and glass in our buildings; crushed rock, sand and gravel and gypsum in our infrastructure; limestone in toothpaste; salt in food; and barium in medicines. Without these and many others, especially the critical and rare minerals we are using more of in our digital devices, our lives would be a lot less civilised. We just have to find ways of using the Earth’s limited resources much more responsibly.

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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.

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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 structural geologists, they are the ones who try to untangle this super complex earth size natural rubik's cube 

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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 scientific, archaeological and historical evidence. 

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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 and impacts which have been generated by reputable scientists.

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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 settlements and defences and routeways. Rocks were the foundation of their beliefs and rituals.

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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 we are still in it. Ice caps extended to lower latitudes, glaciers grew and then retreated and as they did trees and plants recolonised the landscape. Humans emerged and began to exert their influence on the county, clearing forests and settling in the valleys – but that’s for next time

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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!

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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.

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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.