02.08.07John Macadam / Earthwords, geologist & writer
Portfolio
02.08.07
Here are extracts from a few of the published things I have written. There are no recordings of scripts from radio or TV, nor any printed material not in the public domain (e.g. interpretation strategies and audits), nor material in science journals. Some of the extracts are illustrated with my photographs. You can jump to an indexed list.
Who's paid me? The BBC, Oxford University Press, the National Trust, the European Union, Heritage Lottery Fund, and many others. See a list.
Any Awards? Yes, they are in a short commercial!
The links are to further material in MS Word97
(or later) format
unless indicated as 
(portable document format) for which you will need a free
Acrobat Reader, or hashed (#) which indicates a graphics file (jpg). There's
also a human
jpg to link to the words.
from the third of 8 panels in Brown End Quarry, for Staffordshire Wildlife Trust, 2004
The biggest make-over programme of them all!
TV make-over programmes have nothing on geology! You are looking at a sea-floor - a 350 million sea-floor to be precise!
It started off as a squishy, muddy material in the tropics but it has had more make-overs than TV people could even dream of! It's been squashed, shaped, shaved, painted with earth colours and even moved thousands of kilometres ! And all in just 350 million years! And it will be totally recycled - probably several times - before our local star, the Sun, frazzles the whole planet in a little over 4,000 million years time.
download the first panel,
second panel,
fourth panel,
fifth panel,
sixth panel, seventh panel,
eighth panel ,
and ninth (collecting pile) panel.
You might also like to see the leaflet and the flyer.
from the Two Moors Way, published by Aurum & the Ordnance Survey in 1997
As you come out into the clearing at Heathercombe there is a balsam poplar, which should refresh your nostrils if you have just had a dose of stinkhorn. The final gate into the hamlet was originally a slip-bar (or slot-in) gate. One gatepost into which the bars were slotted is still present. Do not despise this rustic simplicity as the design has several advantages over conventional one-piece gates: easy to repair and if the lower bars are removed the gate becomes a sheep creep. You will see many examples of slip-bar gates in the next few miles.
Lower Hookner has several interesting farm buildings, including
the barn with a hayloft. There is also the trough for an apple crusher inset
into the yard. In the 1970s the hamlet was the base for a pony trekking
operation. There was nothing unusual in that except that the visitors were all
kitted out in western gear before they rode up onto Hamel Down.
The walk alongside the bank takes you past a heronry on the opposite bank and eventually you join the road above the floodplain and drop back down to Withypool. The inn shown on the map is the Royal Oak, which contains many hunting trophies. Various parts of stags, foxes, and otters are on display, and local opinion would probably be happy to see hunt saboteurs added to the display. But the law being what it is the clientele have to content themselves with a pinboard and cuttings about people who disrupt their sport. If you want to go to Exford Youth Hostel, which is 2 1/4 miles (4.5 km) away, take the permissive path to Exford which leaves the road 100 yards down the hill: go up the steps into the wood and follow the yellow rectangles and arrows and then the path's continuation as a bridleway to Exford.
more? - flagging up the local distinctiveness of the Chagford area of Dartmoor
from the South West Coast Path - Padstow to Falmouth, published by Aurum Press, Natural England & the Ordnance Survey in 1990, 2nd ed. 1996, 3rd ed. 2000, 4th 2002, 5th 2005, 6th 2007.
The last native Cornish speaker is reputed to have been Dolly Pentreath, a jowster or fish hawker of Mousehole, who died in 1777, although at Zennor there is a memorial to John Davey, reputedly the last person with any traditional knowledge of Cornish, who died in 1891. Certainly 1800 is accepted as about the latest date at which Cornish was in use by anyone as a living language, after a decline dating back to the first incursions of the Anglo-Saxons across the Tamar, probably in the 8th century. Dolly Pentreath, and others, acquired a late fame and a little cash for their knowledge of Cornish but, sadly, the only piece of her fishwifely repertoire that was recorded was "Cronnack hagar dhu" ("The ugly black toad"), hurled at the squire who had upset her basket of fish.
more on the Cornish/Kernewek language and place names in Cornwall (modified from published text)
from Explore the Landscape & Rocks of the St Austell area, published by Cornwall County Council, 2001
Welcome to one of the few places in the world where the geology has been worth billions of pounds. El Dorado? No, St Austell, Cornwall.
Tin, copper, china clay and granite so far, but what in the future? Sand and gravel probably; lithium, ... who knows. All this activity has left a legacy that interests geologists, archaeologists, ecologists, artists, poets, economists .. and increasingly tourists. This short guide is for any visitor who is curious about the landscape and what lies below: it is not designed for experts, who will look for other guides.
from A geological trail between Pendower & Carne, published by Cornwall County Council, 1997
from Saltern Cove Local Nature Reserve, a marine and geological trail for families, published by Torbay Coast & Countryside Trust, 2000
Ladies, gentlemen, children – your attention, please
"Once upon a time ….", began Faye Cops the Trilobite. Shawn the Prawn let out a yawn. These old fossils do go on a bit, he thought. They’ll be bringing out their holiday snaps next!
"Once upon a time, even before the telly, even before the Stone Age, even before the Ice Age, even before the Dinosaur Age, there was the Devonian Age."
"Was that when they invented clotted cream?", asked Wimpy, the littlest shrimp, cheekily.
"NO, the Devonian Age began over 400 million years ago, when Torbay was south of the Equator!"
"You mean Torbay has been sliding around all over the planet?", asked Shawn.
"And everywhere else. Africa, America .. they’re all sliding."
Wimpy, who may have been a tiny shrimp but was very brainy, said: "They are all parts of ‘plates’. Plates are great big slabs of the Earth that slide about. Torbay is part of Europe and now we are sliding away from the American plate. When plates collide the rocks get bent and broken, and mountains are formed. Like the Himalayas."
"Well, who’s a clever clogs, then?"
Wimpy just waved all his ten feet happily and smiled, shrimpily.
"All this science is getting me in a pickle", said Shawn.
"I think he means ‘in a cocktail’ – a Shawn Cocktail!", Wimpy whispered to himself.
let’s get on the trail!
An illustrated version of this? There's another Shawn story to download (400 million years in just 400 words - and a peek into the future). Both have cartoons by Mike Langman, both are graphics files (jpg).
from Down to Earth, a newspaper for amateur geologists
And lamps? And wore spectacles (they need to – even French moles have lousy eyesight!). These special moles are the cartoon animal used to advertise the Géodrome, an unique visitor centre.
120 km south of Paris, alongside the A10 motorway near Orléans the Géodrome is accessible from the twin services at Gidy and Saran. Basically it’s a very large geological garden with the shape of France, the ‘hexagone’, and once you’ve paid your 12F entry (the same as a coffee in the services) you’re free to wander from Brittany to the Alps, from the chalk cliffs of the Channel to the Pyrenees. Large specimens of the rocks are in the appropriate places, and the information comes in 60 or so short, witty panels. OK, so wit doesn’t translate. Easy, just ask for the English language version and there you’ll find equally stylish prose.
If you’re not flogging down to Provence you can enjoy all the aromatic plants alongside the various limestones and igneous rocks from that area. Not a cicada in earshot (just the gentle throb of the motorway). Missing out Brittany this year? There’s a menhir (standing stone), as well as samples of the superb geology. Bombs from the Massif Central – no problem.
The site is also a discreet showcase for the French stone industry. Many of the pieces have been worked to show off their best features, and the companies that provided the stone are identified. The main partners for the whole show are BRGM, the French national geological survey, and Cofiroute, which runs the services on the motorway. ........
Petrified Forest of Arizona, Lulworth Fossil Forest, Fossil Grove in Glasgow, Petrified Forest of Lesvos … Petrified Forest of Lesvos? Is it April the First?
Arizona’s forest is a National Park, Lulworth’s is a SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest), Glasgow’s is in a greenhouse managed by Glasgow’s Parks & Gardens … and Lesvos’ is a European Geopark. Still April the First? Well, no. ‘European Geopark’ is a new designation linking areas which use their outstanding geology for sustainable development. And it’s supported by UNESCO – that’s the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation.
But that’s enough of acronyms and designations. What is so special about Lesvos’ petrified forest? And where is Lesvos, anyway? .....
more popular geology articles (including the complete text of these two)
from Wild Cornwall, the magazine of Cornwall Wildlife Trust
ROCKS .... THEY'RE NOT WILDLIFE!
Over the last few months the seal pups have been born in caves around the coast. In a few months’ time The Lizard will have its distinctive flowers. So too will the National Nature Reserve of Goss Moor. Further north, harebell, a lime-loving plant, will flower on Pentire Head by Polzeath. Further north still, what is left of the Culm grassland has its own distinctive flora and fauna.
All this wildlife is closely related to the geology. The Lizard, a slab of ocean floor, has very different flowers on the serpentine compared to the schist. The overall flatness of Goss Moor is probably the result of marine abrasion, while the small-scale hummocky ground was the result of miners exploiting the tin ore. Pentire has its harebells because the famous pillow lavas, erupted under water, have been altered to a rock rich in calcium carbonate. But what have seal pups got to do with geology? If you look at the caves around the coast you will soon notice that most are there because the sea has eroded along a fault. So where the seals pup is probably related to a break in the rocks which occurred over 300 million years ago.
Even Breney Common and Red Moor reserves have their origin in geology - marine abrasion again - and man’s efforts to work the alluvial tin ore. Earlier this century a tin dredge was working at Breney Common, and gravel was last exploited in 1940. The pools left by these operations are now a major feature of the reserves. .....
Ten summers ago the Trust’s geoconservation group (the RIGS Group) was being dreamt up, forty summers ago the Trust’s earliest incarnation, The Cornwall Naturalists’ Trust (later the Cornwall Trust for Nature Conservation), was set up. The remit - nature conservation - was always meant to include both biodiversity and geodiversity (though those words had not been released on an eager world) – it’s just that the geologists took their time. But that’s geologists for you! What about future summers? Will Cornwall Wildlife Trust, or whatever it is called then, bask in Mediterranean – or Newfoundland-like – summers? Certainly the present membership will never know, so let’s look back a few years, a few years in geological time. Ten thousand years ago our present inter-glacial was beginning, with rapid warming, and as the ice melted sea-level rose, much later to submerge the forests we now find as logs and peats around the coast at Marazion, Praa, Pendower, Portreath, Duckpool, etc. But how about one hundred thousand years ago? What was Cornwall like then? Your wildlife garden could have had woolly mammoths, woolly rhinoceros, reindeer and bears wandering through. And instead of hunting for elusive water voles, you probably would have had little trouble finding lemmings. But what about the climate? Think of coastal Spitsbergen, or anywhere south of an ice-sheet, but near an ocean. And what about digging in your garden? Permafrost! Just the top melted in summertime. But it might all sludge off downslope (we call the deposit ‘head’: it’s the jumble of soil and stones we see in the cliffs above the slate or granite bedrock). So Summertime .. and the garden is sludgy would be a suitable song for Cornish wildlife gardeners in any of the glacial periods of the last couple of million years.
Adapted from Outdoor, a magazine for walkers, May 1994
MILEAN ADVENTURE FOR SMALL CHILDREN: ST MICHAEL'S MOUNT; 1/3
St Michael's Mount must be second only to Land's End for the amount of film used on it, but for small children the Mount needs no technical or electronic wizardry to make it exciting. Sometimes an island, sometimes part of the mainland.
Find out the times of tides, play on the good sandy beach, then walk across on the causeway. If you turn left when you reach the cemetery, a walk past the green telephone box, assorted anchors, and loos brings you to a cafe with outdoor tables made of millstones. Turn right at the far end of the harbour for the National Trust shop and the Sail Loft Restaurant.
Good timing means that by the end of the ice-creams and exploration (yes, you can even visit the castle!) the tide will be in and you have to return by one of Lord St Levan’s ferries, ‘licensed to operate 3 miles seaward of shore’, which will land you at one of several jetties at Marazion only a few hundred yards away but across the sea!
Back on the mainland you might like to walk around the RSPB’s Marazion Marsh reserve. On Wednesdays between June 8 and the end of September you can join a guided walk from 10.30 to lunch time (£1 adults, 50p children). You'll see cygnets, ducklings, crickets, frogs, and so on.
UPDATE for 2007: Guided walks on the RSPB reserve at Marazion Marsh are now irregular and part of a published programme of guided walks in Cornwall. Marazion Marsh is a SAC (Special Area of Conservation, alias a Natura 2000 site) because of its bittern and wintering aquatic warblers. In addition to these rarities 230 different birds have been recorded, 480 different insects and around 500 plants – a very rich area for wildlife! More information from the RSPB on 01392 432691.
from The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Earth Sciences, Oxford University Press 1990 (1st edn.) Also published in Spanish & Chinese, and now on the web.
plate A segment of the lithosphere, which has little volcanic or seismic activity but is bounded by almost continuous belts (known as plate margins) of earthquakes and, in most cases, by volcanic activity and young sub-sea or sub-aerial mountain chains. Most Earth scientists consider there are currently seven large, major plates the African, Antarctic, Eurasian, Indo-Australian or Indian, North American, Pacific and South American Plates). There are also several smaller plates (e.g. the Arabian, Caribbean, Cocos, Nazca, and Philippine Plates) and an increasingly long list of microplates (e.g. the Gorda, Hellenic, and Juan de Fuca Plates). The positions of the boundaries of some present-day plates are disputed, particularly within and adjacent to collision zones, e.g. the Alpine-Himalayan Belt, so it is not surprising that very little agreement has been reached about the histories of plates in the geologic past.
more dictionary definitions (and from dictionaries of the environment and ecology)
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gentle walks
... for families on the Isles of Scilly
... for families with small children on St Michael's Mount, Cornwalland rather more strenuously
... for walkers, with a taste for ice-cream, along the coast path from Coverack to The Lizard, Cornwall
... for walkers along the coast path from Zennor to St Ives and back along the coffin route
... for walkers from Princetown, on DartmoorPlease note that these walks are here for interest only. Anyone attempting to use them does so at their own risk.
Some of these walks first appeared in 'Outdoor', a magazine for walkers. The main cover photo of the May 1994 issue - shown on the right - was mine too.
The magazine folded a few months later - no connection, I hope!
Extracts from guidebooks
... from The Two Moors Way, flagging up the local distinctiveness of the Chagford area of Dartmoor
... from National Trail Guide 9, South West Coast Path, a short essay on Cornish language and place namesPopular geology articles from Down to Earth, written for amateur geologists
Did you know that French moles wore hard hats? Non? about a visitor centre
Petrified trees, olives and ouzo about LesvosEnvironmental writing for families - these extracts are fully illustrated (cartoons and all!)
400 million years in just 400 words - and a peek into the future #
"Ladies, Gentlemen, Children - your attention, please" - by Shawn the Prawn, and friends #Articles from Wild Cornwall, Cornwall Wildlife Trust's quarterly magazine, for members
Rocks ... they're not wildlife!
Chairman's Report for 2000 for the geoconservation group of the Wildlife Trust, distributed to planners, people in the heritage, wildlife and countryside, and minerals fields.Geology trails for 'green tourists' and others - these extracts are fully illustrated
The Rocking Trail: Stunning views - and an eerie experience on an impressive granite tor
The St Austell Town Trail - a building stone and history trail
Strangers on the Shore? - pebbles on Charlestown beach
An introduction to the geology of South East Cornwall #Environmental guide - focussing on geology
Bodmin Moor - 400 million years in the making A 20 page bookletInterpretation panels - for Brown End Quarry Nature Reserve
first panel
| Dictionary
definitions:
(a couple from Macmillan's Dictionary of the Environment, 1977, also published in Spanish in 1984. I wrote about 800 entries on the lithosphere, or about one quarter of the dictionary. The cross-references have been removed from all the definitions.)
(one from The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Earth Sciences, 1990, also published in Chinese, 1996, & Spanish, 2000. I wrote 100 or so entries on plate tectonics.)
(two from The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Ecology, 1994, also published later in Japanese. The entries were mostly recycled from The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Earth Sciences, 1990.)
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Who has paid my bill? My cv gives the details,
but here's an incomplete list:
BBC (Natural History Unit)
BBC (Radio 4 - Open Country)
Oxford University Press
Macmillan
Scottish Natural Heritage
Countryside Council for Wales
English Nature (now part of Natural England)
Countryside Commission (later the Countryside Agency and now part of Natural
England)
The National Trust
Aurum Press
Ordnance Survey
Curriculum Council for Wales (now ACCAC)
Diverse Productions (working for BBC Education)
Cornwall County Council
Cornwall Tourist Board
South West Regional Development Agency
District Councils including North Cornwall, Restormel and Caradon
Earth Resources Centre, University of Exeter
Curry Fund of the Geologists' Association
IMERYS (incorporating the former
English China Clay Ltd)
Cornwall Wildlife Trust
Staffordshire Wildlife Trust
Heritage Lottery Fund
The Curry Trust
NE Staffs Single Regeneration Fund
Peak Environment Fund
Torbay Coast & Countryside Trust
Outdoor
The Guardian
The Cornish Guardian
Western Morning News
COPUS (the Committee on the Public Understanding of Science, administered by The
Royal Society)
European Union, through the LEADER programme,
& others.
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I have been commissioned to write anything from as few as 10 words (adequate for the simpler definitions in dictionaries of science) to 30,000 words (for guidebooks). In between, the length of pieces has often been self-imposed. For example, the maximum length of a trail on an A5 card in one of my geology packs is around 700 words: any more and the font has to be tiny and the card is illegible for many potential users or else there's no space for images. Style varies from precise scientific language to conversational, as appropriate. Regrettably, many scientists still seem to believe that scientific jargon is appropriate for promoting PUS (a memorable acronym for the Public Understanding of Science). I am pleased that The Royal Society, the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the Geologists' Association have supported my efforts, and I have been awarded the Halstead Medal of the Geologists' Association, a COPUS Grant by the Committee on the Public Understanding of Science, and a Millennium Award from the Royal Society and the British Association. As well as two commendations from the Outdoor Writers' Guild, and in the Cornwall Tourism Awards a highly commended in 2004, and a bronze award in 2006. Comments about some of the stuff I have written are on the reviews page. My words have been translated into French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Chinese, Japanese, Welsh and Cornish - at the last count! I also edit material written by non-native English-speakers (so far Italian, Arabic, and Turkish). |
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