Meet the Darwin detective, Michael Roberts
8 MINUTE READ
A geologist, priest, climber and cyclist, Michael has spent decades tracing Charles Darwin’s footsteps through Wales – often on two wheels or by foot. It means he’s experienced the landscape at the same pace as Darwin, so you can too.
Michael Roberts is no ordinary tour leader. He’s a dedicated Darwin detective. His pursuit of the missing links in Darwin’s formative travels in North Wales has taken him from ancient trackways to university archives, piecing together the lost early chapters in the story of one of science’s most influential thinkers.
You can meet Michael – and Rob Knipe (our chairman, a professor of structural geology and a proud Welshman) – on GeoCultura’s Darwin in North Wales tour, which introduces you to the cradle of Darwin’s thinking.
Join our 6-day tour, Retracing Charles Darwin’s travels in North Wales, following the routes of Darwin’s 1831 and 1842 field trips. Book by 27 July and save £500 on our September 2025 tour.
With a background that spans geology, theology and storytelling, Michael brings a rare insight to Darwin’s inner and outer worlds – and no questions are off limits. On tour, like Rob, Michael is happy to discuss everything Darwin, from how he figured out the missing weeks from Darwin’s journals to how Darwin might have thought about deep time and questioned his faith in the face of suffering.
In fact, as one of our guests said last year, “Michael Roberts is a gem and I really valued his experience and insights. You will have to bottle him for the future!”
Fortunately, we don’t need to bottle the essence of Michael just yet as he’s back for more tours in 2025 and 2026! Instead, we had a chat with him so more of you can get to know him. Read on to find out what he has to say about faith, good old detective-style research and why North Wales was more important to Darwin’s evolution as a scientist than Galápagos.
Michael, you’re both a priest and a geologist. Darwin grappled with big questions about creation and belief. How has your own journey through science and faith been shaped by his story?
“Darwin came from a Deist* home and was a formal Anglican due to schooling and society. I doubt if he ever thought that the Earth wasn’t millions of years old, partly due to his family and then his teachers at Cambridge, particularly the Revs John Henslow and Adam Sedgwick, the excellent geologists who taught him geology. To Darwin, belief in an Earth millions of years old was standard Christian belief as it was to most in the 1830s. That comes as a surprise to many, but I can give loads of evidence.
Later, Darwin didn’t see that evolution contradicted a faith in God as creator. Rather, his doubts about Christianity were mostly moral and largely based on suffering. Part of that, though often overstated, was the loss of children, especially his daughter Annie at the age of 10.
The cruelty of nature bugged him, especially with the parasitic ichneumon fly (a.k.a. Darwin’s wasps) – their larvae eating out a caterpillar from inside appalled him. Darwin found the concept of design in nature almost irresolvable, but he was never an atheist. He used the Ugly House – a 15th-century place built of enormous stones, which we usually visit on the tour – as an argument against design.
When I studied geology in the 1960s, Young Earth Creationism had not yet come to Britain so there was no conflict of science and faith, and I found none. But then, in about 1970, Creationists made inroads and claimed the Earth was a few thousand years old. I began to consider the issues after that, focussing on Genesis, geology and especially on historical aspects.
I also looked into how [Creationism] impinges today both in and out of the churches and have made a small contribution. Darwin was always involved [in my research] but more as I studied his Welsh geology. I particularly considered his doubts and questions, whether on the Bible or suffering, both from an intellectual viewpoint and as a believing Christian. Often answers are hard to come by!
*Deists believe in a creator god who does not seek to influence or intervene in the universe.
How does your unique background shape your approach to storytelling as a tour guide? What do you bring to the experience that no one else can?
“Many aspects come together, from my love of North Wales and mountains to my interest in Darwin’s travels and my science background.
I have explored North Wales many times across the decades – since 1961 at a scout camp when I first climbed Snowdon.
I love mountains and rough ground. For me, it has always been “Climb every mountain”. And although I have never been a great climber, I have been up mountains in America, Britain, the Alps and parts of Africa.
Apart from Anglesey, which I got to know later, I have used Darwin’s research materials to go everywhere Darwin went, often on foot or bike. A bike was a good way to travel as it is only slightly faster than a gig [which is how Darwin would have travelled], so I could sense the times involved in travelling. I also have a competent understanding of geology and the history of science.”
Your detective-style research has uncovered some fascinating, lesser-known links between Darwin and Anglesey – and our guests have loved hearing more about your investigations on tour. As Jim, who travelled with you in May last year said: ‘Michael’s encyclopaedic knowledge of Darwin’s North Walian itinerary and the insights he gave us into how he had pieced the evidence together, combined with Rob’s ability to explain all the related geology, even to the geologically illiterate like me, was an ideal double act.’ Can you tell us a little more about your discoveries?
“My research started very casually in 1991 when I was mostly researching the historical relations between Christianity, geology and evolution. I was spending much of my spare time cycling and climbing the Welsh mountains so, for fun, I began visiting the places Darwin went to. I was surprised that no one else had already done so. As I followed in Darwin’s footsteps, I found contradictions in what he wrote in his Autobiography, and couldn’t work out what he was doing for two weeks in mid-August 1831.
Darwin said he went round [a dramatic Welsh cirque] with Sedgwick their letters told a different story. Poor Darwin, it seems his memory let him down!
Gradually my casual interest developed into a serious research project. I went to Cambridge University Library and the Sedgwick Museum many times, studying not just Darwin’s papers but also Sedgwick’s. At times, I got in a hopeless muddle of dates and places around what he did in August 1831. I also found out what he did in Wales before 1831 and started to study his voyage, especially his geology.
I then had a eureka moment. I was reading Darwin’s notes on the Cape Verde Islands – Darwin’s first stop on the Beagle – and found the following note:
“I could have scarcely credited that rocks nearly as hard as the conglomerates of older formation (viz. of red-sandstone formation Anglesey) could daily be increasing under my own eyes.”
Wow, he went to Anglesey! Soon after that I went to Anglesey, found the rocks and hit them with my hammer. The hammer bounced off and my hand hurt!
That, plus the coincidence of a note of Darwin’s on serpentine in 1831 and Darwin’s notes from his voyage on HMS Beagle that say he found serpentine at St Paul’s Rocks in February 1832, plus a thorough re-checkin gof Sedwick’s notes helped me piece together that Darwin must have toured Anglesey with Sedgwick.
As well as combing through the notes, I had to find out about all the roads and tracks in use in 1831, and use maps both recent and ancient.
There’s far more to this story but it’s too much to include here. You’ll have to ask me on tour! All the evidence fitted together, but it took me years to work it all out. In my defence, it was my hobby not an official research job!”
Looking down across the Miners Trail, Snowdonia National Park by Josh Kirk on Unsplash.
Many people know Darwin for the Galápagos. But why should they come to North Wales to understand him better?
“Galapagos isn’t cheap to get to! But seriously, North Wales and Shropshire were formative for Darwin to develop his science. He spent several summers in Wales before he sailed on the Beagle, climbing Snowdon and other mountains, collecting beetles and so on.
In 1831, Darwin carried out much of the field geology that laid the foundation for his Beagle work. With guides, you can go to the places he visited to see how his understanding developed. It’s the same with his visit in 1842, when he researched the glaciation of Snowdonia. Best of all, you do this amidst Wales’s most fantastic scenery.”
Read Beyond Galápagos: 7 places that shaped Charles Darwin
What’s your favourite place in your Retracing Charles Darwin’s travels in North Wales tour – the one that still gives you a bit of a thrill?
“It has to be Cwm Idwal! The most important place for Darwin from his travels in Wales was Cwm Idwal and it’s also one of mine. There is always something new there.”
If someone without a background in geology joins the tour, will they still enjoy it?
“YES!!! There is plenty of beautiful scenery to admire. We start and end in the very English county of Shropshire with rolling hills and farmland, and cover some fine Welsh moorland, coastline and mountains carved with glacial features in between. Anglesey is so different, with rolling hills and wildflowers to charm us. And we see copper mines going back 5,000 years, lots of slate quarries, an orchard of Bardsey apples and a vineyard.
History buffs will love the almost palpable sense of the past. Edward I, with his Welsh campaigns, is ever present with the Marcher castles of Chirk, Conwy, Beaumaris and Harlech. We hear of the Ladies of Llangollen – and have lunch where they lived. We talk about Thomas Telford and his roads, bridges and canals; snippets of the history of Welsh mountaineering and a little on Everest; the botanists John Ray and Edward Lhwyd who in the 1680s started to realise that the earth was very old; and last but not least, Darwin’s first girlfriend, Fanny Mostyn Owen.
Throughout the tour, Rob and I tend to play ping-pong, with me covering the historical aspects and Rob the geological. Our group discussions tend to be lively and varied, ranging from Darwin to geology via all things Welsh!
Perhaps this guest testimonial from Lori-Ann, who travelled with me on this tour last year says it best: ‘You don’t have to be a Darwin fanatic, but it helps. Also, be prepared to have some of your misconceptions challenged – and that is what science is all about!’”
Finally, what do you hope guests take away from spending time with you in Darwin’s Wales?
“An understanding and respect for Darwin’s life as a scientist, an understanding of how well equipped he was for his expedition on the Beagle. An appreciation of the skill of early geologists, and the beauty and awe of North Wales.”