In August 2017, Darren, Katie and Ben attended Goldschmidt 2017 in Paris. Goldschmidt is one of the foremost annual, international conferences on geochemistry and related subjects. Each year, the week-long conference brings together thousands of scientists from throughout the world to talk about subjects including the origin of the Earth and planets, the chemical processes that have shaped Earth over time, the search for new resources, and the environmental challenges facing today’s world. At the conference, Darren convened a session about timescales of crustal processes, and Katie presented a talk about the team’s research and findings entitled “1 million years of volcanism on Ascension Island: insights from stratigraphy, ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar dating and petrology”. Both the session and the talk were well attended and interest in Ascension geology was strong. After the conference the team even managed to find a bit of time to do some sightseeing and sample the delights of French patisserie.