Geology tours: Expert-led small-group vacations
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.
Geology tours: Expert-led small-group vacations
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.
Geology tours: Expert-led small-group vacations
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.
Deepen your understanding on our small-group geology tours
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 geology tours. Typical group size is between 6 and 12 travellers.
Led by professional geologists in partnership with local tour guides, our geology tours 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 and the Badlands of Alberta or the salt diapirs of the Pyrenees, 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 tours, we do so much more than look at the rocks.
Exploring the culture as part of an immersive geology tour
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 reading petroglyphs on the red canyon walls of Utah? 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 on an old Spanish plaza in New Mexico, or a room in a converted castle in Spain.
Each geology 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 geology tours. Our guides can talk about them in as much detail as you choose.
I thought the week was excellent; very interesting and with good variation in the days activities and not overdosing on any one activity. I liked the flexibility shown by taking in Kingston Lacey which nicely completed the Corfe Castle and Lady Bankes story. The information and guiding was excellent – at a good level for everyone with supplemental detail where requested – by lunchtime of the first day it felt like an outing of friends and that’s pretty special!
United States: Utah geology tours and New Mexico geology holiday
A desert adventure: A guided geology tour of Utah’s landscapes and culture
Geology highlights: Colourful arches, balanced rocks and petrified dunes at Arches National Park; the Moab Fault; incised river meanders at Goosenecks State Park; iconic spires in Monument Valley; slot canyons; the massive Comb Ridge monocline; the menacing Factory Butte and the occasional dinosaur footprint.
Culture highlights: Landscapes from the perspectives of Native Americans, early explorers, miners, outlaws and Mormons settlers; the cliff dwellings of prehistoric Native American civilization; desert towns.
Click here for details of this 6 day Utah vacation package, 25 Sep – 1 Oct 2025
Rambling, rafting, riding and rifting: Exploring the Rio Grande Rift of Colorado and New Mexico
Geology highlights: Observe the distinctive environments of modern and ancient rift systems; visit the tallest dunes in North America; stroll in the caldera of a giant super-volcano.
Culture highlights: Visit Georgia O’Keeffe’s home in the desert and the cliff dwellings of Bandolier National Park; raft the famed Rio Grande River; experience the impressive art galleries and southwestern cuisine of Santa Fe; ride a horse through the sagebrush; soar in a balloon over the faulted surface of the Rift (optional!).
Click here to register interest for this tour in 2025
Canada geology tours: Alberta and the Badlands
Canada geo-tour: Rocky Mountain landscapes and Badlands dinosaurs
Geology highlights: 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. To the east, 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 a tour of its fossil preparation lab; a guided tour of Dinosaur Provincial Park and a visit to its Hadrosaur House.
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.
Click here for details of this 7-day Aberta tour, 16-22 June 2025
Geology tours in Europe
The geology of the Pyrenees, Spain
Geology highlights: The Boltaña anticline and mountain building processes; superb exposures of deep water sediments; walks along 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.
Click here for details of this 7 day Pyrenees vacation package, 14-20 Sep 2025
The Catalan Pyrenees tour (7 days)
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.
Click here to register interest for this tour in 2025
Majestic Alps vacation
Geology highlights: Ride cable cars up to unsurpassed views of the Matterhorn, Mont Blanc, Monte Rosa and other Alpine peaks while learning about their geology and the incredible tectonic forces that formed them; touch outcrops of oceanic crust; stroll on Alpine glaciers; visit a mining museum.
Culture highlights: 4 and 5 star hotels in charming Alpine towns; scenic trips on mountain railroads; visits to museums, castles and chapels; meals in small restaurants in picturesque French, Italian and Swiss valleys; the history of mountaineering.
Click here for details of this 7 day Alps tour, 29 June-5 July 2025
Small-group geology tours in Scotland, England & Wales
Southern England and the 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.
TBC
Darwin in Wales (5 nights): Choice of May or September geology vacations
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.
Click here to view itineraries for this tour in May & September 2025
Scotland geology tours: Landscapes, stories and controversies of the Highlands (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. Also including the North West Highlands Geopark, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Culture highlights: History, from Iron Age settlements and the Highland Clearances to the Jacobite Risings and World War II.
Click here to register interest for this tour in 2025
Small-group Ireland Geology Tours
Ireland geology tour: The Dingle Peninsula and the Ring of Kerry (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.
Click here to register interest for this tour in 2025
Ireland vacation packages: Dublin, Galway Bay & Cliffs of Moher
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.
Click here to view itinerary for this tour in 2025
