It has always seemed the wrong way round - that a new moon sets while an old moon rises - but this morning we had a fine view of an old moon rising above Ben Talla on Mull. An old moon is up almost all day but invisible, hidden behind the bright blue of the daylight sky.Dawn heralded another wonderfully fine day with hardly a breath of wind, though it remained cold: the temperature when this photo was taken stood at just 1C, and by lunch time, despite five hours of wall-to-wall sunshine, it had only struggled up to 5C.
By four in the afternoon the sun shone onto the Kilchoan side of Maclean's Nose, the point at the south end of Ben Hiant which sticks out into the Sound. Whoever Maclean was, he must have had a memorable nasal appendage to have such a prominent feature named after him. The references to which I have access don't give the origins of this Maclean, but the Macleans of Mull, whose seat was Duart castle, were both friends and rivals of the Clan MacIain which ruled Ardnamurchan.
By four in the afternoon the sun shone onto the Kilchoan side of Maclean's Nose, the point at the south end of Ben Hiant which sticks out into the Sound. Whoever Maclean was, he must have had a memorable nasal appendage to have such a prominent feature named after him. The references to which I have access don't give the origins of this Maclean, but the Macleans of Mull, whose seat was Duart castle, were both friends and rivals of the Clan MacIain which ruled Ardnamurchan.
Maclean's Nose is formed of an agglomerate, a rock which forms in the vent of a volcano. It's often a very pretty rock, with a variety of the existing rocks caught up in the magma which welled out of the volcano, sometimes when the walls of the magma chamber collapsed inwards.
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