Want to hear the full incredible story of the landscape of Cumbria?  To celebrate our 60^th anniversary Cumbria Wildlife Trust has published a new, richly illustrated book – Cumbria Rocks. The book is for everyone curious about their landscape. In uncomplicated language it reveals the full history of Cumbria through tales of 60 special rocky places.

Author, Cumbrian geologist Ian Jackson, takes readers on a journey across the whole county and 500 million years of Cumbria’s history, from caves that were once a red-hot desert to a nature reserve that 180 million years ago was Cumbria’s very own Jurassic Park. The stories connect Cumbria’s rocks to the county’s wildlife, history, economy, art and society.

Ian says: “It’s not a typical geology book – it’s a picture book!”. With full page colour photographs, it opens a window into the Cumbria beneath your feet. Each page encourages you to explore the whole county and its diverse and beautiful places, to understand why they are as they are. The 60 rock sites are wonderfully diverse and range from the Scottish border to Morecambe Bay, and from St Bees Head to the Pennine hills. The book doesn’t just cover places you may know in the Lake District, but many other stunning locations across Cumbria waiting for you to discover.

Ian says: “This book is a personal selection of 60 special places where rocks make a statement about Cumbria’s landscape, wildlife, history and culture. When I was a boy I was full of questions about where I lived. Why is that hill that shape, what are those rocks and crystals, did dinosaurs and mammoths ever live here? Like most scientists I guess, as we get older, we forget the fundamental questions that made us curious and full of wonder when we were younger. I wanted to produce a book that helped answer people’s deceptively simple questions about the county I grew up in. I wanted to make the real story of our landscape accessible for everyone and more relevant.”

Stephen Trotter, CEO of Cumbria Wildlife Trust says: “I hope this book inspires people to pull on their boots and helps them discover amazing places where they can climb over remnants of old volcanoes and deep oceans, experience the power of ancient earthquakes, walk over a crag that was once a coral sea, witness the awesome force of the last Ice Age or simply wonder at the ingenuity of our ancestors who used these rocks in so many ways to create our shared heritage. But this wonderful array of rocks and landscape we have is not only important in its own right, it provides the foundation for all of our habitats and wildlife – it is literally the bedrock of our biodiversity.”

Priced at £14.00, the book, published by Northern Heritage and can be ordered online from  Northern Heritage and via a link on our website, and is available in many bookshops around the region. All profits from the sale of the books will go to Cumbria Wildlife Trust.