Google the word 'Ardnamurchan' and the links immediately offered are those for which the peninsula is now best known - as a wonderful place for visitors to find relaxation and enjoyment in some of the most wild and spectacular scenery that mainland Scotland has to offer. But in amongst these are links to the geology of the area for which the peninsula has been famous for nearly a hundred years. As a geology student in the 1960s it was how The Diary first heard of the place as it occurs in almost every text book about the igneous and geological history of the British Isles.
The secrets of Ardnamurchan's ancient rocks were first fully explained by work done in the 1920s by that venerable institution, the British Geological Survey, which, in 1930, produced a splendid Memoir, The Geology of Ardnamurchan, North-west Mull and Coll. While much work has been done on the peninsula since, the main premise of that Memoir hasn't been changed - that the western end of the peninsula is best understood by imagining not one but three volcanic centres which erupted at the beginning of the Tertiary, between about 65 and 55 million years ago.
BGS surveyors also produced a detailed map which, like all geological maps, is as much as work of art as of science. That map has only recently (2010) be updated and reissued and, like most of the original work, the modern BGS has felt the need to make remarkably few changes. A copy of the map can be seen in the geology exhibition room at Ardnamurchan Lighthouse, where a full description of Ardnamurchan's two billion-year geological history can be viewed.
This is the first of a series of seven posts
about the Ardnamurchan Volcano
Top photo looks from Glendrian to the flanks of Meall Meadhoin.
Second photo taken along the track between Ockle and Eilagadale.
Bottom photo courtesy Ardnamurchan Lighthouse Trust.
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