Amazing Camus nan Geall and Ben Hiant looking across to Mull, Coll and Tiree.
Commentary.
Ardnamurchan is perhaps the most intriguing, beguiling, fascinating and beautiful peninsula on the British Mainland,
it just so happens to be the most westerly, as well.
Such a serene scene at this shallow bay.
Grazed right up to the fences above the beach
and yet it possesses a wild unfettered magnificence
that suspends belief, an aura of other-worldliness.
Mull and Tiree are on the distant oceanic horizon.
Golden eagles swooping and screeching, above an adjacent hill.
But the making of what we now see was massive, hugely violent and, yes, very other-worldly.
Ben Hiant, on the right, rises in two steps from the sea,
the first 1,000 feet and the second 732 feet or a grand total of 528 metres.
It is a south-flanking remnant of a huge Ardnamurchan volcano possibly over 20,000 feet as suggested by a clear three-mile diameter, collapsed caldera, five miles north-west of here.
Amongst the dips and hollows are rocks like Dolerite, Breccia and Pitchstone.
Lava Cone Sheets and Moine Schists,
with its gleaming, glittering skin-thin layers of Mica, evidence of a fiery and cataclysmic past.
Macro or micro-scale this landscape is complex, and wonderfully compelling.
It is little explored because of its remoteness.
Over 60 miles from Arisaig and over 50 miles from the Corran Ferry on mostly single-track roads, few venture this far at such limited speeds.
But, as with so many areas in Scotland, the price of patience
will be heavily rewarded if we have the “stickability.”
Amazing Camus nan Geall and Ben Hiant looking across to Mull, Coll and Tiree.
Commentary.
Ardnamurchan is perhaps the most intriguing, beguiling, fascinating and beautiful peninsula on the British Mainland,
it just so happens to be the most westerly, as well.
Such a serene scene at this shallow bay.
Grazed right up to the fences above the beach
and yet it possesses a wild unfettered magnificence
that suspends belief, an aura of other-worldliness.
Mull and Tiree are on the distant oceanic horizon.
Golden eagles swooping and screeching, above an adjacent hill.
But the making of what we now see was massive, hugely violent and, yes, very other-worldly.
Ben Hiant, on the right, rises in two steps from the sea,
the first 1,000 feet and the second 732 feet or a grand total of 528 metres.
It is a south-flanking remnant of a huge Ardnamurchan volcano possibly over 20,000 feet as suggested by a clear three-mile diameter, collapsed caldera, five miles north-west of here.
Amongst the dips and hollows are rocks like Dolerite, Breccia and Pitchstone.
Lava Cone Sheets and Moine Schists,
with its gleaming, glittering skin-thin layers of Mica, evidence of a fiery and cataclysmic past.
Macro or micro-scale this landscape is complex, and wonderfully compelling.
It is little explored because of its remoteness.
Over 60 miles from Arisaig and over 50 miles from the Corran Ferry on mostly single-track roads, few venture this far at such limited speeds.
But, as with so many areas in Scotland, the price of patience
will be heavily rewarded if we have the “stickability.”