Rock and roll: Britain's varied landscape starts an epic voyage across the globe.

摘要

You can find almost every known type of rock in Britain. There are three reasons for this. First, to get to its present location, Britain has undertaken a 400-million-year journey from the other side of the globe. Starting near the South Pole, it edged slowly northwards, metamorphosing from one habitat to another as it passed through the latitudes: tundra, forest, scrub, desert, savannah and jungle, once below the equator, and then once above it. These changes created a rainbow of rock types. Second,Britannia didn't always rule the waves. Every so often, it sank under the sea, and these regular dunkings also upped the rock count. Third, Britain got caught in the middle of some of the most violent tussles in geological history, and these, too, lefttheir mark.