Book review: What lies beneath?

Ian Vince has learned to peel back the surface of Britain to reveal the geological forces that shaped it
  
  


Book Review: The Lie Of The Land by Ian Vince, geological history of British landscape
The rocks that form the hummocky plateau of the Northwest Highlands – the 'rolling boil' landscape of the coastal strip from Skye to Cape Wrath – are up to three billion years old and were once part of the Canadian Shield: the oldest rocks on Earth. Beyond the plateau lies the younger terrain of Quinag
Photograph: Ian Vince Photograph: guardian.co.uk
Book Review: The Lie Of The Land by Ian Vince, geological history of British landscape
The underlying rock – Lewisian Gneiss – was stranded here when the Atlantic Ocean opened up and has endured countless millennia of wind, rain and ice that have left it as the peaty, drowned landscape we know today. Thousands of depressions gouged in the rock by the elements filled with water to make lochs, lochans and Scottish puddles
Photograph: Ian Vince Photograph: guardian.co.uk
Book Review: The Lie Of The Land by Ian Vince, geological history of British landscape
Rising abruptly out of the rolling boil are billion-year-old 'inselbergs', island mountains of sandstone like Suilven (above): a sugar-loaf peak that the Vikings called ‘the pillar'
Photograph: Ian Vince Photograph: guardian.co.uk
Book Review: The Lie Of The Land by Ian Vince, geological history of British landscape
Near Kyle of Lochalsh, where the Skye Bridge spans Kyle Akin, the Lewisian Gneiss rock of the Northwest Highlands makes its most southerly mainland appearance. From here it island-hops southwest to Coll, Tiree and Skerrymore
Photograph: Ian Vince Photograph: guardian.co.uk
Book Review: The Lie Of The Land by Ian Vince, geological history of British landscape
This peaceful scene at the north end of the Caledonian Canal in Inverness belies the fact that the Great Glen in which it lies was once the stage for the most violent forces on Earth some 400 million years ago. The glen straddles the Great Glen Fault – a similar structure to the San Andreas Fault in California – which was responsible for the landscape to its north moving 80 miles southwest, then 18 miles back
Photograph: Ian Vince Photograph: guardian.co.uk
Book Review: The Lie Of The Land by Ian Vince, geological history of British landscape
The Edinburgh volcanoes were among the more recent geological activities in Scotland, around 350 million years ago. Salisbury Crags in Holyrood Park was formed by that activity, though the molten rock never made it to the surface
Photograph: Ian Vince Photograph: guardian.co.uk
Book Review: The Lie Of The Land by Ian Vince, geological history of British landscape
The dry-stone walls of the Lake District are an obvious expression of the geology of an area, each and every stone gathered locally and built to an age-old pattern
Photograph: Ian Vince Photograph: guardian.co.uk
Book Review: The Lie Of The Land by Ian Vince, geological history of British landscape
'Cams' (seen here at the bottom of the picture) are stacked on edge like fallen dominoes atop the wall to discourage sheep from bounding over. The lake is Ullswater, a typical 'glacial ribbon lake' carved out by a glacier
Photograph: Ian Vince Photograph: guardian.co.uk
Book Review: The Lie Of The Land by Ian Vince, geological history of British landscape
Snowdonia has a lot in common with the Lake District: they have similar geological histories in which glaciation scooped out the classic U-shaped valleys
Photograph: Ian Vince Photograph: guardian.co.uk
Book Review: The Lie Of The Land by Ian Vince, geological history of British landscape
Long before dry-stone walls, humans were crafting the landscape to suit their own ends. The trilithons of Stonehenge are formed from sarsen, a kind of hardened sandstone found on the Marlborough Downs. It should not be confused with the smaller ‘bluestones’, which are made of hard igneous rock transported from the Preseli Hills in south Wales
Photograph: Ian Vince Photograph: guardian.co.uk
 

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