rocks, cliffs, fossils
"This is not a geology book. Well, okay, this is a geology book. But I'm not a geologist: I'm a hillwalker who likes to know what's going on under my feet." (Granite & Grit: Introduction)
Over 30 years of walking, scrambling and climbing over Britain's geology – in the utterly confusing Lake District and the helpfully colour-coded hills of Torridon – I was waiting for the non-technical book with plenty of pictures to explain it all. In the end, I wrote it myself. And since then I've been studying, explaining, and photographing the rocks of the UK's mountains and seaside.
Geology is more than just learning the names and how many million years. It's looking at a rock and working out how the heck it got there, and what it tells about the very ancient history of this world we walk on, climb over and lie on top of on a beach towel.
Granite & Grit
a walker's guide to the geology of Britain's mountains: Frances Lincoln 2008:
details on this website
Sandstone and Sea Stacks
a beachcomber's guide to Britain's coastal geology: Frances Lincoln 2011:
details on this website
Walking the Jurassic Coast
Small-format walking guidebook, but with almost as much rocks as route description: Cicerone 2015
details on Cicerone website
Posts about rocks, landforms, glaciers etc. from my weekly Substack newsletter
Introductory essay on the rocks of England's coast in The National Trust Book of the Coast 2015: the chapter's very short so I described the erosive effect of the sea today, and the same thing happening 200 million years ago as shown in the 'Great Unconformity' of Devon and Dorset.
Chapter describing the rocks of Scotland's coast in A Handbook of Scotland's Coast: very loosely based around Hugh Macdiarmid's 'On a Raised Beach' (you can read an extract from the poem here poem pdf) Saraband 2015 Saraband website
Cornerstones: Sandstone
15-minute talk on Radio 3 'The Essay' about the Old and New Red Sandstones, recorded at Portishead, Somerset 2013: listen to (or download) podcast
Geological Introduction in Shropshire by John Gillham (Cicerone Press)
Geological Introduction in The Cumbria Way by John Gillham (Cicerone Press)
Chapter on the Jurassic Coast of Devon and Dorset in Walking the World's Natural Wonders New Holland 2008