Down to Earth

Flights from the UK to western Canada and northwest USA often pass almost directly over Ardnamurchan, so we're always on the lookout for a sight of the peninsula. On this visit across the pond via Iceland, cloud prevented us from seeing much on the way out but on the return we passed over what looked like a Caribbean island. This picture shows the southwest end of Coll with the islet of Gunna at top centre, Feall Bay at right, and Crossapol Bay to the left.

May isn't the best month to be away, particularly a May which has had the perfect combination of sunshine and rain to encourage almost fearsome growth. While the fruit and vegetables had been well cared for, the grass between the beds resembled a hay meadow. Cutting it back revealed the first strawberries on the point of ripening and....

....gooseberries which, while the fruit is coming on well, had had a visit from a small army of gooseberry sawfly larvae which had stripped the leaves off one of the bushes.

With a seven-hour time difference between Edmonton and the UK, we're struggling both with lack of sleep as the sun never set on the 'overnight' return flight over the Canadian tundra and the icefields of Greenland, and with jet lag. Brainless hacking at overgrown vegetation to a cheerful serenade from our local robin is about as much as we're good for.

A Return Home

As many readers will be well aware, we've been away for the last month so most blog posts have been of the canned variety. Many thanks to Rachael for running the blog in my absence, and to those who sent her pictures and stories.

Happily, we were welcomed home, in a jet-lagged state, by this local resident who, in her excitement, had escaped from her run to greet us, and....

....by a passing cruise ship, the Disney Magic, whose passengers must have been enjoying their views of the Scottish coastline.

As can be seen from the picture, we've come back to a misty and humid day, with visibility at times so poor that ships in the Sound were using their foghorns. This is in sharp contrast to the weather Kilchoan has been enjoying almost throughout our absence, which has featured sunshine and temperatures soaring towards 30C.

It's a sharp contrast too between the place we've been staying, the city of Edmonton, Alberta, and West Ardnamurchan. Edmonton is a dynamic, bustling and brash oil town with huge highways and industrial areas and suburbia which sprawl across miles of flat land, but it's saved by being built on the North Saskatchewan River and by the local city council's policy of retaining much of its banks for....

....public parks. How refreshing it is to find a council which still has funds to spend on its residents' amenities. This park, Rundle, has play areas for children, a paddling lakes (for kayaks, as well as kids), wildlife lakes, fountains, tennis courts, baseball and football pitches, picnic and barbecue areas, miles of paved paths, and much, much more, all immaculately maintained.

Our son's house, where we stayed for a fortnight while he and his wife were holidaying on the Pacific coast, backs onto one of the ravines which lead down to the river. This has been left wild, and is home to....

....coyotes, of which we saw three during our stay, beavers, porcupines, raccoons and....

....a host of birds and butterflies - this is a Canadian tiger swallowtail. In all I photographed and identified over thirty different species of bird.

One of the highlights of the stay was going out storm-chasing with our son. It has always been an ambition of mine to photograph a lightning bolt, something I have tried on many occasions without success. Although I had no tripod and my camera has no setting for taking long-exposure pictures in anything but pitch darkness, one of the hundreds of shots (at ISO 200,  f/3.3 and 1/20 sec) of a succession of spectacular events produced this, a strike with Edmonton's massive Strathcona oil refinery in the foreground.

SM-12 Fort at Rubha an Duin Bhain

The headland at the centre of this picture is Rubha an Duin Bhain, the headland of the white fortress. It lies on the north coast of Ardnamurchan, due north of Sanna, and forms the western arm of a wide bay.

At low tide, seen here, the beach is separated from the sea by rocks so, although the beach would have been a good pull-up for boats, this could only have been achieved for an hour or so either side of high tide.

The remains of the fortress, which is described as a promontory fort built during the Iron Age, can be found on the left of the ridge, which is split into two by a deep cleft. The land immediately behind the beach has a machair soil, across which the stripes of lazy beds can be seen, so it was, at one time, worked.

In this picture the remains of the stone wall which protects the fort's southern flanks can be seen. It's described by Historic Environment Scotland, which refers to the site as 'Burnbank Fort', thus: "The wall survives as a stony bank 3.7m in average thickness and up to 1m high. Several stones indicate the position of the outer wall face, but no inner facing stones can be seen. The entrance is a narrow gap in the wall just slightly to the W of the centre of the wall. A short length of outer wall at this point protects the entrance."

This picture shows the main part of the wall, looking east towards the beach. The HES site states that, "Much of the interior of the fort is occupied by bare rock, but immediately to the N of the main wall are two grassy shelves which are probably the sites of prehistoric dwellings."

Historic Environment Scotland's designation of the site is here.

Geology near the Pier

There's over a hundred million years of history crammed into this small area of rock near the CalMac pier, but it's fairly typical of the many geological features which have attracted thousands of geologists to the area.

The grey rock, marked 'L', is a limestone which was laid down as a calcerous ooze on the bottom of a warm, shallow sea some 130 million years ago. It was deeply buried and solidified by the pressure of the overlying rocks.

Something like 60 million years ago, the limestone was intruded by molten rocks associated with the Ardnamurchan volcano. A sheet of this - the browner rock - pushed its way into the limestone. To some extent it followed the natural lines of weakness in the limestone, along its bedding planes, but just here it split in two, into an upper sheet marked 'S1' and a lower sheet marked 'S2' which cuts across the limestone beds before continuing to follow them. Neither of these sheets can have been particularly hot as the limestone shows no signs of baking where the igneous rock is in contact.

Since that time, the great pile of rock which buried this feature has been worn away, much of it by the ice sheets which covered the area until about 10,000 years ago. The sea has recently removed more, exposing the structure in a low cliff.

Haar over Mingary Castle

Whilst out for a run along the coast yesterday evening, I had to stop and take a photo of Mingary Castle, looking majestic in the evening light beneath Ben Hiant, with the haar slowing snaking it's way in.