The Bizarre Geography Of Wales

Four periods of Earth's history — the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian — carry names from one small corner of Britain. One of them only exists because two Victorian geologists argued about Welsh rock for decades and never spoke again. No other country on Earth has anything like that. Wales is usually pictured as sheep, rain and a lot of consonants. It's actually one of the strangest pieces of ground on the planet: a mountain whose summit is an old seabed, a power station hidden inside a mountain that hits full output in sixteen seconds, slate that roofed half the world, anthracite that fuelled the navies of the steam age, more castles per square mile than anywhere else on Earth, and the oldest known ceremonial burial in western Europe — originally mistaken for a Roman woman. CHAPTERS 0:00 Wales is not what you think 0:55 The country that named deep time 1:59 The argument that split the timescale 3:12 The slate that roofed the world 4:19 Dinorwig - the power station inside a mountain 5:24 Llanfairpwllgwyngyll - the longest place name in Europe 6:29 Welsh steam coal and the Cardiff Coal Exchange 7:39 Why the Valleys towns are one street wide 8:49 More castles per square mile than anywhere on Earth 10:38 Snowdon - a seabed on top of a mountain 11:37 The Snowdon lily - an Arctic survivor 12:45 The Wales Coast Path 13:48 The Severn - the second largest tidal range on Earth 14:50 Capel Celyn - the village under the water 16:00 The Red Lady of Paviland 17:08 Why Wales might be the most consequential ground in Europe WHAT'S COVERED - Cambria, the Ordovices and the Silures — why the early geological timescale reads like a map of Wales - Sedgwick versus Murchison, and the Ordovician as a posthumous compromise - Penrhyn and Dinorwig — the slate landscape of north-west Wales, now a World Heritage Site - Dinorwig pumped storage — one of the largest artificial caverns in Europe, built partly for the TV kettle surge - The 58-letter Anglesey village name, invented in