Memories of a Geologist: A Journey Through France to Riaño

GLIAG — PETROLEUM ENERGY INSIGHTS

MEMOIRS OF A PETROLEUM GEOLOGIST

FROM LEIDEN TO RIAÑO

( 1970 )

Volume I

Chapter Two — Through France

The Road That Turned Students into Field Geologists

Drs. M.P.T. Chin-A-Lien, MBA, M.Sc., Ing. Geologist

Certified Professional Geologist Nr. 5201-1996 (AAPG)  ·  Chartered European Geologist Nr. 92-1996 (EFG)  ·  Energy Negotiator, June 2021 (AIEN)

Principal Founding Partner & Chief Architect, GLIAG N.V.

Golden Lane Investments Advisory Group

Zoetermeer, The Netherlands  ·  Paramaribo, Suriname

www.petroleumenergyinsights.com

FROM LEIDEN TO RIAÑO (1970)  ·  CHAPTER TWO  ·  MEMOIRS OF A PETROLEUM GEOLOGIST

CHAPTER TWO

Through France

The Road That Turned Students into Field Geologists

Years have a remarkable way of altering one’s understanding of a journey.

At twenty-three, one travels almost entirely toward the future. At seventy-nine, one also travels toward the past.

Every remembered landscape acquires another dimension. The road from Leiden to Riaño no longer exists merely as asphalt connecting two distant places. It has become a thread woven through the fabric of an entire life, connecting events that, at the time, appeared completely unrelated.

Had someone stopped me beside that little Citroën in the summer of 1970 and asked where life would eventually lead, my answer would have been simple. Finish my geology studies. Graduate. Perhaps work for an oil company. Nothing more.

I certainly could not have imagined that the discipline I had chosen would carry me across petroleum provinces on several continents, into offshore drilling campaigns, government negotiations, international conferences and boardrooms where decisions involving billions of dollars would be discussed. Nor could I have imagined that one day I would return to this same journey, not as a geologist measuring limestone beds, but as a writer attempting to understand how a young man slowly became the person he would later be.

Perhaps that is the true purpose of memoir. Not to remember events. But to discover their meaning.

❖

The road descended gently from the Pyrenean crest, each bend revealing more of northern Spain. The mountains no longer stood before us as an obstacle to be crossed; they had become companions, guiding us toward the valley of the Río Esla.

The air had changed. It carried the dry fragrance of mountain grasses warmed by the afternoon sun, mixed with the faint scent of pine forests covering the higher slopes. After nearly two days inside the little Citroën, even opening the window a few centimetres transformed the journey. Fresh mountain air entered the cabin together with sounds we had not heard on the plains of France: cowbells echoing from distant pastures, streams rushing unseen below the road, and the occasional cry of a bird circling above the limestone cliffs.

Neither Willem nor I hurried. We had spent months preparing for this expedition. Geological maps had been studied until every coloured formation seemed familiar. Professor Jan Hagedoorn’s lectures on structural geology echoed in our memories. Yet both of us sensed that the mountains ahead would prove more demanding than any lecture hall. Reality always surpasses diagrams. A geological map, however beautifully drawn, remains only an invitation to discover the landscape itself.

As the kilometres passed, villages appeared whose names we had previously known only from field guides and university instructions. Stone houses clustered around Romanesque churches. Narrow streets wound between centuries-old walls polished smooth by generations of hands. Elderly villagers watched the passing Citroën with quiet curiosity, perhaps wondering what had brought two young Dutch geology students so far from home. The pace of life seemed untouched by urgency. Time itself appeared to move differently in these valleys.

Only many years later did I realise how fortunate we had been. We encountered the old Riaño before its disappearance beneath the reservoir. We walked through streets that no longer exist. We crossed bridges that today lie beneath deep water. We saw a landscape still connected to its own history, unaware that engineering, however necessary, would soon reshape it forever.

A geologist quickly learns that landscapes are never permanent. Mountains rise. Rivers change course. Seas advance and retreat. Yet that lesson usually unfolds over millions of years. Here, human history would alter an entire valley within a single generation. The irony did not occur to me then. It would only become apparent decades later, when I returned with my family in 2007 and found memory confronting a completely different landscape.

For now, however, none of that belonged to the future we could imagine. The valley welcomed us exactly as it had welcomed travellers for centuries. The late afternoon sunlight softened the limestone ridges surrounding the Río Esla. Shadows lengthened across meadows where cattle grazed peacefully. The mountains, so imposing from a distance, now enclosed the valley with unexpected gentleness.

Our destination lay ahead. Our education was about to begin — not the education recorded in examination grades or university transcripts, but another education entirely: the education of boots on mountain paths, of compasses aligned with bedding planes, of notebooks filled while sitting on sun-warmed limestone, of discussions that continued long after sunset around simple meals shared with fellow students.

This was the moment the journey became the classroom.

Only afterwards would I understand that this field season marked a quiet turning point. Until then I had been learning geology. From that moment onward, geology would begin shaping the way I saw the world. Every basin would become a story. Every mountain range a chapter in Earth’s autobiography. Every landscape an open book waiting patiently to be read.

❖

There are journeys whose destination is known from the moment one leaves home. There are others whose true destination only becomes visible decades later.

When Willem and I crossed into Spain, we believed our journey had almost ended. According to the Michelin map folded between us, Riaño lay only a short distance ahead. The university programme would begin. Geological mapping would occupy our days. In six weeks we would return to Leiden with notebooks, measured sections and perhaps a better understanding of Alpine tectonics.

That was our expectation. Life had prepared something entirely different. No university curriculum could have explained that this expedition would quietly determine the direction of the next half-century. One does not notice such moments while living them. History rarely announces itself. It simply begins.

The road followed the Río Esla upstream. Occasionally the river disappeared behind limestone ridges only to reappear several kilometres later, sparkling beneath the afternoon sun. The water moved with the confidence of a river that had patiently shaped its valley long before human beings arrived.

Geologists often say that water is the Earth’s greatest sculptor. Standing beside that river many years later, I realised another truth: memory behaves much like a river. It does not preserve every detail. It erodes. It deposits. It reshapes. Yet certain bends remain exactly as they were.

I can no longer remember every conversation Willem and I had during those hours. But I remember the rhythm of the engine. The smell of warm limestone after the afternoon sun. The sound of cowbells drifting through the valley. The first glimpse of old Riaño. Those memories remain untouched, perhaps because they marked the end of youth’s first great journey.

Looking back now, I realise that this drive across Europe accomplished something neither of us had intended. It taught independence. No mobile telephones. No satellite navigation. No internet. No instant reservations. If the map proved wrong, we corrected our course. If the car developed a problem, we solved it ourselves. If we became lost, we asked. Travel still demanded participation.

Perhaps that explains why journeys of that era remain so vivid. We did not merely arrive. We travelled. There is an important difference. Modern travel often compresses geography. Our journey expanded it. Every kilometre added another layer of understanding.

Looking back, I can trace a continuous line. It does not begin in a boardroom. Nor in an office. It begins on a narrow mountain road, where two young geology students drove a modest grey Citroën toward a valley that no longer exists. Perhaps every life contains such a road. One only recognises it after travelling much farther.

❖

The evening light slowly settled over the Cantabrian Mountains. Ahead, unseen beyond the next bend, lay Riaño. Ahead lay six weeks of climbing ridges, measuring strata, debating structures and discovering that the Earth is the greatest teacher a geologist could ever have. Behind us lay nearly two thousand kilometres of road. Before us lay a lifetime.

The road entered a narrow gorge. Towering limestone walls rose almost vertically on both sides, their grey surfaces interrupted by darker bands of marl deposited in ancient seas unimaginably older than humanity itself.

I remember stopping the car. Not because the engine required rest. Because we did.

We climbed out carrying nothing except curiosity. There are moments when a geologist instinctively touches the rock — not to collect a sample, not to perform an analysis, simply to establish contact. I placed my hand against the cool limestone. For millions of years these rocks had remained here while continents drifted, oceans opened and closed, species evolved and disappeared, civilisations rose and fell.

Against such timescales, a human life becomes astonishingly brief. Yet geology never made me feel insignificant. Quite the opposite. It made me feel connected — connected to processes infinitely larger than myself, connected to a planet whose history continued regardless of human ambition.

That perspective has remained with me throughout my professional life. Exploration teaches humility. One may interpret seismic lines, calculate reserves and evaluate petroleum systems with great confidence. Nature still has the final word. The Earth does not negotiate. It simply reveals itself gradually to those patient enough to observe.

Looking back, I recognise that this lesson began long before my first offshore well. It began here, on a quiet mountain road approaching Riaño.

Willem interrupted my thoughts. “Ready?”

I smiled. There was no need for explanation. He knew exactly why I had stopped.

We climbed back into the Citroën. The engine started immediately, as always. Its familiar rhythm accompanied us through the final kilometres of that remarkable journey.

The valley widened. The evening sun illuminated scattered farmhouses whose stone walls reflected a warm golden colour against the surrounding green meadows. Thin columns of smoke rose quietly from chimneys. Life proceeded with an unhurried confidence. The world still seemed immense — perhaps because, for us, it was.

University had provided knowledge. Travel was providing perspective. Fieldwork would soon provide experience. Only much later would I realise that wisdom emerges from the patient combination of all three.

As twilight approached, the first houses of Riaño appeared. There was nothing dramatic about our arrival. No triumphant announcement. No emotional declaration. Only two tired geology students in a dusty grey Citroën entering a small mountain village after nearly two days on European roads.

Sometimes the most important arrivals are also the quietest. They ask for no applause. They simply open a new chapter.

Tomorrow we would unpack our geological hammers, Brunton compasses, notebooks and maps. Tomorrow the mountains would become our professors. Tomorrow the Earth itself would begin teaching lessons no classroom could ever equal.

Tonight, however, the journey from Leiden had reached its peaceful conclusion. The engine fell silent. Outside, evening settled gently over the Cantabrian Mountains. Inside the little Citroën, Willem and I exchanged a brief smile.

We had arrived.

Neither of us knew that, more than half a century later, I would still be travelling that same road in memory, discovering that some journeys never truly end.

And without either of us saying a word, one chapter of life came gently to its end while another, far richer one, had already begun.

TOMORROW

Chapter Three

The mountains become the professors: the first weeks of mapping in the Cantabrian range, and the field lessons no lecture hall could ever teach.

ABOUT THIS SERIES

From Leiden to Riaño (1970) is the first volume of the memoirs of Marcel P.T. Chin-A-Lien. These memoirs are based on real events and real people. Some have sadly passed away, yet they remain vividly present in memory. By telling this story, I hope to honour them, and to preserve a small part of a generation that learned geology with paper maps, compasses, notebooks, and countless hours in the field.

Soso Lobi

© 2026 Marcel P.T. Chin-A-Lien. All rights reserved.

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