Geology Tours : Expert-led and Small Groups with GeoCultura
Explore the world’s most exceptional landscapes on small group geology tours led by renowned geologists. You’ll deepen your understanding of geology and discover the history and culture which bring these areas alive.
Explore the world’s most exceptional landscapes on our small group geology tours led by renowned experts. You’ll deepen your understanding of geology and get to know the people and places that bring these areas alive.
Whether your interest in geology is professional or casual – or you’re travelling with someone whose thirst for geological knowledge differs from yours – you’ll unearth something fascinating on GeoCultura’s small group tours. Typical group size is between 6 and 12 travellers.
Led by professional geologists in partnership with local tour guides, our geology holidays take you to the core of places that are renowned for their geology.
From deep gorges to towering rock spires, and world-renowned dinosaur museums to hands-on fossil hunts, we take you to the coalface of earth history.
Some of our geo tours emphasise impressive landscapes, such as the Rockies of Alberta or the Chiricahua Hoodoos of Arizona, while others focus on the heritage of geology, such as at Knockan Crag in Scotland. Most are a combination of the two, plus a generous measure of local culture, making them ideal whatever your level of understanding of geology.
While geology is an important part of our small group guided tours, we do so much more than look at the rocks.
Our tours also explore the influence these deep-time sites have had on more recent history. As well as delving into the lives of past inhabitants, you’ll get to know the ways of life of the people that dwell in and around those iconic landscapes today.
How about a leisurely lunch of tapas on a patio in a medieval town overlooking the Pyrenees? Or counting the hummingbird varieties in southeast Arizona? Or sipping whisky at a Scottish distillery? All while enjoying accommodations that encapsulate the local atmosphere, such as a country house hotel in Ireland, a hotel perched among the red rocks of Utah, or a converted castle in Spain.
Each tour is led by a geologist with a love of the destination and expertise in the relevant geology. Our guides include leading academics such as Rob Butler of the University of Aberdeen, Rob Knipe of Leeds University and Paul Olsen of Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, as well as renowned consultants such as Mark Rowan and Henry Pettingill.
As well as being experts in their fields, our tour leaders bring to the tour their own life experiences, an insatiable curiosity and a love of storytelling.
Intrigued? Here are some of the geological and cultural highlights of a few of our tours. Our guides can talk about them in as much detail as you choose.
Our geology vacations in the United States
Our geology holidays in Canada
Alberta Dinosaurs and Hoodoos: Small Group Vacation Package (2 nights)
Geology highlights: The deeply eroded canyons, gullies and hoodoo spires of the colourful Badlands, home to a wealth of dinosaur, reptile, mammal, fish and plant fossils; world-class examples of lateral accretion surfaces and inclined heterolithic strata in outcrop; a day at the Royal Tyrell Museum with its collection of dinosaur and Burgess Shale specimens and including a tour of its fossil preparation lab; a guided tour of Dinosaur Provincial Park and a visit to its Hadrosaur House.
Culture highlights: Otherworldly scenery, frequently used as a backdrop for movies and TV series; a walking trail not usually open to the public; a picnic among the amazing landscapes of Dinosaur Provincial Park.
Alberta’s Rockies and Badlands: Landscapes and Dinosaurs
Geology highlights: All the wonders of the 2-night Dinosaur and Hoodoo tour, plus the ridges and peaks of Cambrian strata thrust over younger beds that form the Canadian Rockies; a textbook thrust fault at Mount Kidd; a drumlin field; the Mazama ash beds; amazing Trilobite trace fossils and stromatoporoid vugs; vistas of erratic-filled glacial valleys.
Culture highlights: Two UNESCO World Heritage sites; Calgary Tower; Banff; Icefields Parkway; Morraine Lake and Lake Louise; cooking your own meal in the famous steak pits of Patricia.
Our Geological tours of Spain
The Geology of the Pyrenees: (6 nights)
Geology highlights: The Boltaña anticline and mountain building processes; superb exposures of deep water sediments; deep gorges cut into platform carbonates; extensive Nummulites limestones.
Culture highlights: The Camino de Santiago; Pyrenean and Spanish cuisine; an off-the-beaten-path wine region; a mountain-top monastery; medieval villages.
The Catalan Pyrenees tour (6 nights)
Geology highlights: Salt tectonics and a salt mine; the rock spires at Collegats Gorge that inspired Gaudí’s architecture; clues to unravelling the formation of the Pyrenees; dinosaur eggs and footprints; a Neogene volcanic field.
Culture highlights: Less-visited works of two local artists: the architect Antoni Gaudí and the surrealist Salvador Dalí; stroll through perched Medieval towns, cathedrals, monasteries, and castles; sample small-parcel wines at a boutique vineyard.
Small group geology tours of Scotland, England & Wales
Southern England: London, Bath and gthe Jurassic Coast
Geology highlights: Guided geology walk in central London; the stones of Avebury and Bath; the rounded and graded potato-to pea-size clasts of the 18-mile Chesil Beach. Fossil hunting at Lyme Regis; the iconic Durdle Door arch, Lulworth Cove and Stair Hole; the Etches Collection museum, including the spectacular recently found pliosaur skull.
Culture highlights: Three UNESCO World Heritage sites; an 800-year-old abbey and a Gothic cathedral; famous novelists, Romans, Georgians and Victorians.
Darwin in Wales (5 nights)
Geology highlights: Sites where Darwin was taught to ‘read the rocks and landscapes’ including the volcanic centre of Snowdonia, glacial features at Cwm Idwal and serpentinite on the Isle of Anglesey.
Culture highlights: Ruined forts and carefully preserved castles; Welsh slate mines; Welsh artists; tales of Welsh giants; a stay at a Darwin-themed hotel.
Geological Landscapes, Stories and Controversies of North-West Scotland (7 nights)
Geology highlights: Loch Ness and the Great Glen Fault; “The Cradle of Geology”: Knockan Crag and the Moine Thrust, one of the locations where thrust faults were first recognised; Loch Eriboll and the outcrop that saw the demise of the Murchison-Geikie “controversy” and the birthplace of a new global tectonics; 3.2-billion-year-old Lewisian gneiss; a 1.3-billion-year-old meteor impact crater.
Culture highlights: History, from Iron Age settlements and the Highland Clearances to the Jacobite Risings and World War II.
Small group geology tours of Ireland
South-West Ireland: Dingle Peninsula and Ring of Kerry Tour (5 nights)
Geology highlights: Paleozoic shallow marine, fluvial, lacustrine and massive aeolian clastics as well as volcanics; the conundrum of the Inch Conglomerate; ‘Kerry Diamonds’; the Traberg Conglomerate, an Old Red Sandstone equivalent; extensive glaciated landforms; a slate quarry with vertebrate fossils.
Culture highlights: The last port visited by the Titanic; Irish folk music, cuisine and Irish folklore; hidden beaches with crashing Atlantic waves; abandoned villages; a seal colony.
West Coast of Ireland Tour: Galway Bay to the Cliffs of Moher (6 nights)
Geology highlights: Glacially-smoothed karst limestone hills and dramatic sea cliffs of deepwater shales and cyclic deltaic deposits; the ‘biokarst’ of the Flaggy Shore; networks of subterranean caves, including the Great Stalactite at Doolin Cave; extensive carboniferous limestone pavement at Doolin Pier; the ‘Wormhole’ at Inishmore.
Culture highlights: An Iron Age fort; scenery that’s featured in Hollywood movies; the world-famous Cliffs of Moher, inhabited by seabirds; Irish music; a stay in Ireland’s only Michelin-starred pub.
See our upcoming tours and join us to experience the geological wonders of the world!