Continuing our mid-week movies theme, here’s a more personal take on a Geopark. This one, however, is at the other end of the country - the top left-hand corner of Scotland, the Northwest Highlands.

Tags: Scotland

This film, narrated by a child, is a lovely crash-course introduction to geology in general and to the English Riviera Geopark in particular - the world’s first urban geopark.

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Not strictly a lay-by in any sense of the word - more a place you may find yourself in one of the most picturesque traffic queues in the world: the western side of the upper reaches of the River Fal, waiting to board the King Harry Ferry to the Roseland peninsula.


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The River Fal is itself a drowned river valley or, to give it its GCSE name, a ria - formed when sea levels rose at the end of the last glaciation (of the so-far-as-we-know current Ice Age). Unique habitats are created in rias; all the estuarine mud is miles upstream and the overhanging trees at the water’s edge offer sheltering opportunities for birds and insects. Quite apart from its natural history and beauty, the drowned river valley has other uses; the ria is very deep, deep enough to park a couple of cargo ships half a dozen miles inland, as the following picture shows.

For people who have requested availability of The Lie of the Land in local independent book shops, try ordering from the Hive - a new initiative that ties up hundreds of independent booksellers across Britain to a slick web ordering mechanism. You buy the book - often at a reasonable discount - and then have it delivered free to your local shop, where you collect it. You can then wander around your local bookseller and see what else they have selected, without having to negotiate a wall of celebrity autobiographies and ‘inspiring’ hard-luck misery memoirs.

Here are the links to the hardback and paperback.

Tags: Lie of the Land

We've known about it for a little while now but have not been able to link to it for some arcane reason, probably best known to Amazon itself, but the Kindle edition of The Lie of the Land is well and truly here.

It seems strangely apt that it has found its way into the world of e-books, if only because the book is partly an account of travels through Britain's amazing landscapes, so where better to read one of those than while on the move yourself?

The Lie of the Land

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According to the BBC website - and we’re indebted to BLC member Fiona Wilson for pointing this out to us - Grampian cavers have discovered a very large cave chamber in one of the most remote areas of Scotland.

The cave, near Applecross on the west coast, is 180 metres long and has stalactites measuring up to 2 metres. For Metropolitan types, that’s the length of ten bendy-buses, or Russell Square. More information at the link.

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The National Trust and Hay Festival have announced their top “Outdoors Books of the Year” and we’re very pleased and excited to tell you that Ian Vince’s under-the-field guide to the British landscape, The Lie of the Land - which we often casually refer to as the unofficial manual of the BLC - has emerged as one of the winners.

The endorsement, the result of a month-long poll to find the best recent writing about nature and the outdoors is shared with The Natural Navigator by Tristan Gooley, The Garden in the Clouds by Antony Woodward, Weeds by Richard Mabey and a number of other lovely books written from unique perspectives on the countryside. Hundreds of votes were cast and the winners were revealed at the Hay Festival - Britain’s most famous literary festival.

The British Landscape Club and Ian would like to thank everyone who voted for The Lie of the Land.

Tags: Lie of the Land