Once more we are travelling west along the North Anatolian Fault, and our destination is the Mudurnu valley- a beautiful, peaceful landscape of mist-filled mountains and serene lakes and valleys created by the fault line. En route we stop off in Bolu. In the main street we are somewhat surprised…
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What is becoming apparent to us as we travel further east along the North Anatolian Fault is the sheer scale of the area and number of people affected by it’s presence. We have driven for days across an expansive and much changing landscape, and whilst the urban connubations are few…
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We expected the huge mountain ranges and the wide open spaces in this part of Turkey, but what we didn’t reckon on was just how much agriculture would play a part here. This is a much greener and less arid part of turkey than further east, and it is a…
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We’ve decided to take advantage of being so far east and drive a little further north towards Armenia and Georgia, into the spectacular Kackar mountains. This area once belonged to the Kingdom of Georgia so it feels quite different from the rest of Turkey. Map reading can be a bit…
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We’re in Kalamata to find out about life in the town, which was hit on 13th September 1986 by an earthquake of nearly 6.6 magnitude. Although 28 people lost their lives, in the long term the town made a hugely successful comeback from tragedy. Kalamata is the second biggest town…
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A headline we read the other day summed it up.. “Scientists can’t predict earthquakes but toads might be able to” It was about a study published in the Journal of Zoology which claimed that toads had detected the L’Aquila earthquake days before it struck. Zoologist Dr Rachel Grant studying toads…
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Greece is one of the most seismically active countries in the world. It is riddled with fault lines and frequently experiences earthquakes. We visited the town of Nafpaktos, near the Corinth – Patras rift which experienced a 5.1m earthquake in January this year. We talked to some of the local…
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Washing blows in the wind long since dried, a child’s toy lies abandoned in a pile of rubble, an entire bathroom hangs at an impossible angle from a decimated apartment block. On every street corner are the haunting signs of a city abandoned in minutes, as people fled their houses…
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Our aim all along has been to shun motorways and get as close as possible to fault lines themselves. Little did we expect, however, to be able to bed down in the crater of a volcano, our mats gently warmed by the earth below, inhaling air that has been proven…
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A while ago back in Iceland with met up with Sandra, the trainee tattoo-artist cum earthquake expert. She was helping run the earthquake centre in Kopasker. Watch this clip for a younger person’s perspective:
Asked if he’s passionate about volcanoes Villi Knudsen tells us he’s interested in people who make shoes, he thinks being a postman would be an interesting job and that he enjoys watching his model train of an evening. Not what you’d expect from a man who’s spent his life chasing…
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Some of our more avid readers may have noticed we are a tad heavy on the geography and a little light on people. This is because we are filming all the interviews we are doing and it takes time to edit, upload and post this stuff. So please bear with…
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Geologically speaking, Fault Line Living truly began today with us visiting the dramatic ‘start’ of the fault line we are following in Iceland – the Mid-Atlantic Ridge – a massive 18,000 km rift between two of the earth’s major tectonic plates. We visited the point at which the ridge enters…
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