about John sutcliffe

About the author

I was born in Doncaster in the final days of 1944 and spent most of my childhood in the small Yorkshire railway village of Hellifield, on the western edge of what later became the Yorkshire Dales National Park. My freedom to roam alone from the age of about ten, and my love of the countryside that developed in those early years, were big influences on my later life. After a gap year labouring in a Ribblesdale quarry,  while  caving at weekends, I went on to study geology at the Royal School of Mines, Imperial College, London.  Shortly after graduation, I headed overseas with my new wife, to eventually have five children in two clutches on three continents.

Until recently I worked as an exploration geologist in the minerals industry, mainly running copper, gold and silver exploration projects in North and South America, Europe and the Middle East. In more recent years, my geology work has mainly focused on the Andean countries of South America, especially the Cordilleran regions of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chile that together form one of the world’s great mineral provinces.  I am now semi-retired in my native Yorkshire Dales, wondering what to do next …