Geological Mystery

As soon as he was back from the Antarctic, Trevor Potts, who runs the Ardnamurchan Campsite, began work on clearing a site for his new house. The groundwork is being done by Hughie MacLachlan of local firm H MacLachlan Contracts.

This shows the slope to the left of the first picture, where Hughie has dug back into layers of Jurassic shale and limestone, but one area, shown to the right of this photo, seems to cut vertically through the sedimentary layers. At first sight it might be an igneous dyke, but it yielded some very strange structures.

These balls, a bit bigger than a golf ball, are embedded in the rock - the one on the left is still stuck in to a chunk of it. When broken open, they don't seem to have any structure.

It's difficult to tell whether they are of igneous origin or not. In many ways, they resemble the concretions that can be found in shales, such as the famous ones at Whitby and Robin Hood's Bay in Yorkshire - but these won't be found in a dyke.

To add to the mystery, an elongated tube-like structure of uniform cross-section runs up at an angle through the dyke. It, too, has these 'balls' embedded in it.

If anyone has any idea what these may be, we would be very interested to hear. Trevor has preserved the exposure, which will be at the back of his house, as well as a number of the 'balls' and sections of the 'tube'.

Trevor runs the Ardnamurchan Campsite, website here.

A Second Beached Whale?

'The Raptor' was scrambling over the rocks between Sanna and Portuairk yesterday when he came across these remains fairly high up on the shore.

They may be the carcass of the whale beached at Sanna towards the end of December (Diary entry here) but, if they are, something has made short work of the flesh which was on the beast then.

'The Raptor' describes these remains as being 'about ten foot long' and with the head missing. This certainly seems the sort of size that pilot whale would have been but it could also be a second one.

Whether it's a new or the same one, can anyone explain what may have happened to the flesh?

Many thanks to 'The Raptor' for the pictures.

Cobbles - 2

The Diary's identification of rock types is very much a hit-and-miss affair, so it was good to have Rob Gill, who runs GEOSEC Slides, a small business based in Achnaha, write in with a couple of photographs to show how rock identification should be done.

Rob says, "I found this cobble at Ormsaigbeg a couple of years ago. As it was obviously different from most others I took it to Achnaha and made a section from a bit of it. It is a garnet amphibolite (or possibly granulite) most probably Lewisian. I cannot prove that, though it is difficult to think where else it could have come from. The spots are garnets surrounded by a rim of feldspar, a depletion zone as the garnets grew at the expense of the amphibole.

"I do not know its source, but is quite distinctive, so it might be possible to trace it."

This picture shows Rob's thin section, with the distinctive pink of the garnets surrounded by paler felspar, set in a matrix of finer crystals.

Metamorphic rocks such as this are fascinating to study. It may have started as something like a mudstone, which was deeply buried in the core of a mountain chain, and heated and squeezed so a totally new set of minerals grew. During this process, however, some minerals may have grown and been absorbed again, changing into others.

It's also interesting to grapple with the idea that, if it is Lewisian in age, it's over a billion years old.

Rob's website, which is here, is well worth a visit to see the beautiful rock thin sections he produces.

Sunrise

Sunrise yesterday.

Many thanks to 'Kilchoan Early Bird'

A Kilchoan Publisher - 2

From Jenny Chapman

Nigel was a senior lecturer in Computer Science at University College London, when we decided to move back to Scotland in 1994 so I could study at Edinburgh College of Art - we had lived and worked in St. Andrews. Nigel had already been commissioned to write a book on programming for a major publisher so, instead of seeking another academic post, he decided to write full time.

In summer 1999 we visited West Ardnamurchan for the first time. We chose West Ardnamurchan for that holiday, from the Highlands in general, by sticking a pin in a map - this is literally true. We had not visited the peninsula before. By then we were working on our first jointly-authored college textbook, "Digital Multimedia", commissioned by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. We were living near Edinburgh in the Borders and took a short working holiday, staying in Achosnich, working in the little garden there on student exercises and projects for the book.

In autumn 1999 we decided to move here, to work from home in a more peaceful environment. The property market in the Edinburgh/Borders area was okay at the time, so we were able to sell our house there within weeks. We rented Kilmory Cottage for the winter while we looked for a house to buy here.

The 1st edition of "Digital Multimedia" was completed in Kilmory Cottage. As usual, we did the typesetting ourselves, so had to submit the complete files ready for printing. There was no broadband then, so in mid-winter, in the pitch dark and a howling gale, we drove up to the point where the Kilmory road meets the "main" road to post the CD containing the files to the publisher. We put the package in the little postbox at the turn of the road down towards Kilmory. That launched our textbook-writing career. "Digital Multimedia" is now a bestselling college textbook, used in almost all the countries of the world - even in unlikely places such as the Maldives, Kazakhstan and Mongolia.

The 2nd and 3rd editions of "Digital Multimedia" were written in Achnaha, and the chapters on digital images, animation and video used material featuring the local area. The video chapter featured work from the award-winning multimedia short film, "3 Minutes Silence", using footage filmed at Sanna and Castle Tioram.

We also drew on the local area for examples for our practical textbook, "Digital Media Tools", and our third major textbook was "Web Design: A Complete Introduction", published in 2006. Both were written in Achnaha.

As for so many people, everything went well for us till 2007. There were many changes in the publishing industry owing to the global recession. Between 2007 and 2009 our publisher, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, changed a great deal, with much of the responsibility for British publications passing to the parent company in the USA.

By mid-2009, John Wiley Inc. had completely altered Wiley's policy with regard to British authors. We had contracts for new books - they were cancelled. We had agreements to proceed with new editions - they were cancelled too. Our existing textbooks would remain in print, but there would be no new commissions. For years we had been depending on publishing a new book or new edition about every 18 months, in order to earn enough to live on. Suddenly, that stopped. We had to find a way forward on our own.

First, we decided to try to sell PDF versions of the chapters of our existing books. Fortunately, we had been able to retain all the electronic rights for the latest editions. We created the MacAvon Media web site and download store - www.macavonmedia.com - and started publishing electronic (PDF) versions of the existing books, and built a new support structure for lecturers around the world. macavonmedia.com made a little bit of money, but only a little bit.

By early 2011 it was clear that it wouldn't be enough to pay the bills. Times were very tough in publishing generally, and there was little or no chance of new commissions for textbooks. We decided that we would go ahead anyway, and publish new titles ourselves. "Chapman and Chapman" was a well-established "brand", known internationally, so we had a reasonable chance of success.

It's too soon to say whether success will really result, but we are now actively publishing, and just beginning to sell MacAvon Media paperbacks and Kindle editions. Broadband internet connection in this remote area has made it possible to do this work from here. Without it, we could not.

Many thanks to Jenny for the two articles.

Gortenfern

Today's sunshine is a reminder of the beauty of Ardnamurchan on a summer's day - as illustrated by this superb shot of the beach at Gortenfern taken by Paul Howes.

Low Tide

Spring tides have come with the new moon and, with them, a change in the weather. We woke to snow on the hills and some slushy remains on sheltered roofs, though it must also have rained a fair amount overnight. During the morning the sky steadily cleared and the sun came out, angling low across the landscape.

We wandered along the Ormsaigbeg beach in the early afternoon when the tide was at its lowest, looking across Kilchoan Bay to the Coastguard shed and the distant, snow-covered hills of Morvern.

This barnacle-encrusted anchor near the end of the jetty is usually covered by the sea. It's neatly placed so that those of us who kayak in to the jetty scrape against it. The trouble with anchors, by their nature, is that they are difficult to move.

Still water and low tide make for good hunting amongst the seaweed for the grey heron who owns this waterfront. They seem to be the most solitary of birds and, when two are seen together, they always seem to be quarrelling. This one never allows us closer than about fifty metres, when he lets out a harsh cry, takes off, and flaps a short distance down the coast, a performance that's repeated several times as we follow him.

Sedan Seaweed Carrier

The strain of transporting seaweed up from the beach using a wheelbarrow (see earlier blog entry here) was too much for us, so The Diary invented and built this machine, using a wicker log basket. The idea came from the old sedan chair, last seen in use in the UK during the 19th century.

Readers of The Diary may be becoming seriously worried about the author's sanity but should be reassured. This is nothing new, and probably derives from spending thirty years working in an impoverished national education system, where resources were less provided than invented - and, incidentally, teaching some history.

The important thing is that the sedan seaweed carrier works. The trouble is that the seaweed, having lain on the beaches since the last storm, is so slimy it is quite disgusting to handle.

What we need now is another thumping good storm.

Aurora Group

With the sun becoming more active, we're putting together an Aurora Group on West Ardnamurchan, drawing together the sort of people who are prepared to get up at any hour of the night to see an aurora display.

If you live on West Ardnamurchan and would like to participate by agreeing

- to be contacted by another member of the group at any time to see an event

- to phone other people if you see an event.

....contact The Diary.

Many thanks to The-Dan on Flickr for the picture, more here.

Local Businesses

Over the next few weeks, The Diary has invited local businessmen and women to write about their businesses. So far, three have agreed to, but if there are any other businesses who would like to submit entries, they would be very much welcomed.

The first business is MacAvon Media, based in Achnaha.