As a boy growing up in a fishing and coal mining village in coastal Northumberland I was always fascinated by all aspects of science: astronomy, marine biology, geology but was also always sure that I wanted to be a Nuclear Physicist! I read Physics at Wadham College, Oxford graduating in 1972. However, Plate Tectonics had just been invented and I decided that this was the subject for me and studied for a PhD in Geophysics at Newcastle-upon-Tyne on the rifting of Africa to form the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden which took me on research cruises and also fieldwork in the Eastern Desert of Egypt.