JAKOBSHAVN ‘ICEBERG FACTORY’, ILULISSAT, GREENLAND
This is one of the main outlets of the Greenland ice sheet. Here you can see enormous chunks of ice break off the main glacier and become icebergs. Apparently, it’s where the one that sank the Titanic is thought to have originated. Some of the Icebergs are half a kilometre in size and to see them up close is awe-inspiring as it is bizarre. You can sit in a nearby hotel quietly having breakfast and watch these immense slabs of ice float past. Picture: Paul Souders / Barcroft Media
MOUNT ETNA, SICILY
Etna is the largest of Italy’s three active volcanoes, and at 3,326 metres is three times the height of the next biggest, Vesuvius. You can get close to see the fireworks A few years ago, nine tourists died, which teaches you a bit of respect.
SALT FLATS OF DEATH VALLEY, CALIFORNIA US
Visiting the salt flats is like going to another planet: huge mountains on either side of you, blue skies above and dazzling white flats. The water drains off the mountains, but when it reaches the valley it’s so hot that it evaporates leaving a white crust. It’s also one of the lowest places on the continent, riven with earthquakes.
ERTA ALE, ETHIOPIA
This lava lake is one of few places in the world where you can see a pool of bubbling lava. The lava swirls, makes patterns and forms plates in a ferociously hot, 100 metre-wide lake. It’s in the middle of bandit country, on the border with Eritrea, and the only way you can get there is by camel. Once there, you have to abseil down a hole to get to a viewing ledge. Unsurprisingly, few people visit.
ASSYNT, NORTH-WEST SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS
We add this one to our list of UK fantastic scenery, one to take your breath away. The mountain belt here is seriously impressive. It rises up out of the sea and is believed to have some of the oldest rocks in Britain, perhaps the Earth. They are gneiss rocks, which have been formed with incredible – almost unfathomable – heat and pressure around 3,000 million years old and offer a window into a time we know very little about.
‘THE WAVES’, ARIZONA US
You can help but fall in love with this place, the red sandstone has been sculpted by the wind into this spectacular shape. The rock is fragile, so you need to walk carefully. Funnily, it popularity and location was first publicised in a German magazine in 1995. The US government let just 10 people visit per day but it is worth the wait.
METHANE LAKES, SIBERIA
The permafrost in Siberia is full of carbon and when it gets warm, it breaks off into the lakes, where it rots. This produces methane bobbles. When the lakes freeze, the bubbles get stuck under the ice and you can puncture them to let it escape. It’s flammable – seeing fire come out of the ice is one of the most bizarre things to experience.
SAN ANDREAS FAULT, CALIFORNIA US
The most famous fault on the planet. There’s a section in Hollister, just outside San Francisco, where you can see how it’s cut through streets and gardens. It’s impossible to stand with your feet on two different plates and feel the power beneath you, moving at the speed that your fingernails grow.
THE CENOTES CAVE SYSTEM, YUCATAN, MEXICO
This particular ring of caverns is situated along the rim of a 100km-wide impact crater that dates back 65 million years – when the dinosaurs became extinct. The caves were formed when underground water dissolved the rock and created water-filled voids that you can now dive in.
METEOR CRATER, ARIZONA, US
This is the most famous impact crater on the planet, and one of the largest at around 1.1km across. It’s pretty amazing that some 50,000 years ago, a lump of space rock just 30 metres in diameter created it when it slammed into the ground. Interestingly, there used to be arguments about whether craters like these were, in fact, formed by impacts, and it was the nuclear bomb testers of the Sixties who proved the science behind them. Today, there are 171 documented impact craters on the planet.