INTERVIEW
Christopher Somerville spent 40 years running scared of geology. There was only one way to fix the fear: a walk into the bones of Britain.
The View
GEOLOGY, SIGHS CHRISTOPHER Somerville. “It’s the thing most walkers would probably like to know more about than they do. We have a sense that it’s exciting and important, and that knowing a bit about it might enrich all those walks we go on.
“But then as soon as you dare to read more than a few paragraphs about geology, you’re into impenetrable stuff about Andesitic sheets of laminated rhyolites and tuffaceous breccias. And at that point, we switch off. I know because that’s exactly how I was.”
So Christopher’s latest book, Walking the Bones of Britain, is partly an exercise in exposure therapy: a quest to face down that aversion, teach himself geology in a way he could actually understand, and then take his reader on a great big walk that would bring it all to life.
“We’re right to have that sense that geology is exciting and important, because it is,” he says.
“It underpins almost every aspect of our lives, from where buildings are built to how we farm to which animals we see on a walk. It can enrich our understanding of any landscape. It’s just a question of how we grasp the concepts involved without our minds melting.”
It’s little surprise that Christopher’s solution would involve a walk. He’s possibly Britain’s most prolific author on walking, having written some 40 books including The January Man, Never Eat Shredded Wheat (The Geography We’ve Lost and How to Find It) and Britain and Ireland’s Best Wild Places. He’s also the walking correspondent of The Times.
But for this project, he reached back to his former life as a teacher. Some 40 years ago, Christopher came across an illustrated geological map of Britain in a classroom textbook called Philip’s Modern School Atlas. Beguiled by the simple, colourful and beautiful way it rendered three billion years of history in one image, he ripped the page out (‘mea maxima culpa’, he apologises) and took it home. And he swiftly realised one wonderful thing.
“The oldest rocks were at top left, the youngest at bottom right; northwest to southeast, Outer Hebrides to Thames Estuary,” he explains.
“Couldn’t one simply take a walk through this
