Scotland on EARTH Magazine

Getting there and getting around Scotland's Southwestern Islands

Thu, 26 Oct 2017 21:08:16 -0400

The Caledonian MacBrayne (CalMac) ferry service is the primary way to access Arran and Islay from mainland Scotland. Credit: James Stringer, CC BY-NC 2.0.

Ferry service to Arran and Islay is the primary way to access the islands from the Scottish mainland. Caledonian MacBrayne (“CalMac”) offers a “hopscotch” ticket package that goes from Ardrossan (close to Glasgow) to Brodick (Arran), across the Kintyre Peninsula, to Port Ellen (Islay), and then back to Kintyre, all on your own schedule, for £150, including ferrying your rental car. (We brought a rental car with us from the mainland, in the interest of being able to access outcrops where and when we wanted, but each island offers a municipal bus service as well.) Reserve a space for your car on the ferry during peak tourist times. Also, be prepared to be stuck on an island for a bit (usually not more than a few hours) if the weather turns.

Travels in Geology: The diverse geology, landscapes and whiskys of Scotland's Southwestern Islands

Thu, 26 Oct 2017 20:41:54 -0400

Goatfell is the highest point on the Isle of Arran. The granitic mountain is also a showpiece of alpine glaciation. Credit: ©iStockphoto.com/mille19.

Arran and Islay are two large islands of southwestern Scotland that showcase a suite of interesting rocks and landscapes, and Scotland’s second-finest product (after the geology): single malt whisky. Visiting Arran and Islay together is an enjoyable experience in contrasts. Both islands are sparsely populated, with a few thousand permanent residents each, but amenable to tourists, boasting well-developed infrastructure, including regular ferry service from the mainland. Arran is mountainous, while Islay has relatively subdued topography. Both get a lot of visitors in the summer and feature a wealth of cultural and recreational opportunities, in addition to outcrops that will prove insightful to the geologically minded traveler.

Geologic Column: A masochist hikes through the heather

Tue, 19 Sep 2017 11:49:12 -0400

A hike through the Scottish Highlands could be a delightful sojourn or a masochistic, miserable plod through rain. Credit: Alex Berger, CC BY-NC 2.0.

Callan Bentley’s delightful article on the Scottish Highlands in the May 2017 EARTH took me back to my first encounter with the Moor of Rannoch and the Pass of Glencoe in the Grampian Highlands, about 80 kilometers south of the part of Scotland that Bentley describes. According to “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” it’s where the Bridge of Death and the Gorge of Eternal Peril are. And in 1960, cartoonist Carl Barks revealed that the Hound of the Whiskervilles might be found prowling the vicinity of Castle McDuck, ancestral home of Disney’s Donald on Rannoch Moor.

Travels in Geology: Geo-diversity and geologic history in the North West Highlands of Scotland

Wed, 19 Apr 2017 13:54:35 -0400

The North West Highlands of Scotland feature rugged mountains and gorgeous valleys with a rich geological history. Credit: Summer Brown.

The North West Highlands of Scotland are sparsely populated, with rugged mountains and gorgeous valleys featuring a rich geological history. The area has the oldest rocks in the United Kingdom as well as some young landscapes freshly sculpted by ice sheets during the last glaciation. Early geological explorations and explanations of the North West Highlands proved perplexing and contentious, in part because the rocks of this region span two-thirds of Earth’s history in age. Additionally, there are, in places, sedimentary layers sandwiched between metamorphic packages of gneiss and schist. How did this happen? Was the schist deposited like a sedimentary rock atop the sandstone and limestone? Was it a former sedimentary layer that for some reason was exceptionally metamorphosed relative to the layers beneath it? Throw in three separate unconformities and the picture becomes even more muddied. You start to see why multiple generations of British geology students have traveled here for field camps.

Getting there and getting around Shetland

Tue, 27 Dec 2016 15:02:22 -0500

Visitors to the Shetland Islands take overnight ferries, with comfortable berths and showers, from Aberdeen to Lerwick, the largest town in the Shetland Islands. The NorthLink Ferry has a children's playroom with toys and Viking costumes. Credit: clockwise from top: Swifant, CC BY-SA 2.0; Callan Bentley; Tom Bastin, CC BY 2.0.

Getting to the Shetland Islands requires taking a ferry from mainland Scotland. Ferries are very comfortable and well-run, with a smooth overnight passage from Aberdeen to Lerwick. We took that route up to Shetland, and a different route — to the Orkney Islands — on the way back. The schedule running from Lerwick to the town of Kirkwall (in Orkney) is less ideal, arriving in the middle of the night, but the local hotels are used to their guests dropping in at midnight.

Travels in Geology: Scotland's stunning Shetland

Tue, 27 Dec 2016 14:26:14 -0500

A typical view of the countryside of the Shetland Islands. Credit: Callan Bentley.

About 170 kilometers northeast of mainland Scotland, there is a remote cluster of islands featuring terrific geology, friendly people, an idiosyncratic landscape, and a great many sheep. This is Scotland’s Shetland Islands, an archipelago known to its friends as simply “Shetland.”

Last Scottish glacier melted during big chill?

Tue, 04 Nov 2014 10:32:43 -0500

The final vestiges of an ice cap from Scotland's last glaciation are thought to have melted in Rannoch Moor. Credit: Gordon Bromley.

Scotland’s craggy peaks, deep lochs and fjord-lined coast are hallmarks of a landscape shaped by successive glaciations, the last of which, toward the end of the Pleistocene, draped the highlands with an ice cap covering 9,500 square kilometers. Rocky moraines give scientists a clear picture of the boundaries of this glaciation, called the Loch Lomond Advance, although the timeline of its growth and eventual demise has proved difficult to pin down.

Living mountains and wild places

Mon, 03 Nov 2014 10:00:12 -0500

The Pools of Dee, located in the heart of the Lairig Ghru, are the headwaters for the River Dee. Credit: Mary Caperton Morton.

Mountains often boast a strong literary tradition, and the legendary Cairngorms are no exception. Two of the Highlands’ most geo-minded authors are Nan Shepherd and Robert Macfarlane. Shepherd was born in 1893 and spent her whole life in Aberdeen, exploring the Cairngorm Mountains. Among the first female mountaineers, Shepherd also wrote novels, poetry and one nonfiction ode to the Cairngorms called “The Living Mountain.”

Bag your first Munro

Mon, 03 Nov 2014 09:18:56 -0500

Credit: Mary Caperton Morton.

One of the founding members of the Scottish Mountaineering Club, Hugh Munro, compiled a list of all the mountains in Scotland taller than 3,000 feet (914.4 meters), which are now called Munros. At present, there are 283, although this number has changed over time due to improvements in surveying and mapping. Munro-bagging is a national pastime in Scotland; for some dedicated Scots, summiting all the Munros is a lifelong project.

Travels in Geology: The inspiring, globe-trotting rocks of Scotland

Mon, 03 Nov 2014 08:21:47 -0500

One of many small lochs, also known as a lochans, in the Cairngorm Mountains. Credit: Mary Caperton Morton.

As the birthplace of both modern geology and the sport of mountaineering, Scotland is home to some incredible, inspiring rocks. For a relatively small landmass — less than 80,000 square kilometers — England’s northern neighbor boasts incredible geologic diversity — the product of a 3-billion-year tectonic journey from the South Pole to its current position.