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Adventure Meets Science On A GeoCultura Tour
23.01.2024 - 23:45 / forbes.com
Many adventure travel companies focus on hiking, walking, and biking, along with a smattering of local culture, history, and cuisine. There are far fewer that elevate science to the center of an adventure trip.
GeoCultura is one of those rare birds. A geologist founded the London-based company and put science at the forefront of trips that go from the West coast of Ireland to the high deserts of Utah, the Catalonian Mountains of Spain, to the rugged Isle of Skye in Scotland. On a GeoCultura trip, the focus is on Earth history, nature, landscapes, and culture to gain a deeper understanding of a place. Then factor in walking in some of the most spectacular landscapes on the planet, hiking, local cuisine, and a comfortable hotel for the night.
“The foundation stone of GeoCultura Tours,” said Rob Knipe, the company founder, ”is to create an atmosphere where visiting a landscape will take people beyond the view and on a journey from what they can see, back through the human and cultural history of the area, and all the way back into the ‘deep time’ of earth history to ‘read’ the landscape. The immensity of geological time is always mixed in with the soberingly short, yet immensely influential, time of humans and recorded history.”
Knipe, an Emeritus Professor at The School of Earth and Environment, Leeds University, was the founder, CEO and Chairman of Rock Deformation Research Ltd, a global, premier structural geology business. His academic and business acumen came into play when he started GeoCultura in 2022.
On a GeoCultura trip, the focus can be on why an ancient ocean in Spain influenced the early culture and trading in the Pyrenean Mountains or how Utah’s natural sandstone bridges and arches formed of red and orange rocks were once ancient dunes formed by wind and water in a landscape now defined by the absence of water. Whatever the location, the idea is to go beyond the landscape and show how geology influences the scenery, folklore, and local history.
On the Isle of Skye, GeoCultutra’s time-travel excursion begins, said Knipe, “when Skye was drifting north from being south of the equator, getting involved in a continental collision as life on earth was exploding 500-400 million years ago, being walked on by Jurassic Dinosaurs and being part of a volcano as the Atlantic Ocean opened. All this has fascinating links to pre-history settlements, the religious colonization, the clearances, as well as the siting of whisky distilleries.”
Knipe stresses that you don’t need a science background to enjoy a GeoCultura tour. Tour leaders are chosen not just for their science background but for their ability to communicate with people at various levels of science experience. The small group sizes, typically 12
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