&2EWSGLMWX-MOIW8LVSYKLXLI-IEXLIV
Ward ChesworthC
allan Bentley’s delightful arti-
cle 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. Accord-
ing 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.
As a teenager, I was inspired to visit
the area after reading Robert Louis Ste-
venson’s “Kidnapped.” Stevenson tells the
story of 17-year-old David Balfour, who
survived a shipwreck off the west coast
of Scotland before making his way back
to Edinburgh with Alan Breck Stewart,
a renegade supporter of Bonnie Prince
Charlie, pretender to the British throne.
The most exciting part of the story is the
“flight through the heather” up the Pass
of Glencoe and across Rannoch Moor,
with King George’s Redcoats in mur-
derous pursuit.
Two hundred years after Balfour’s
fictional shipwreck, and a year older
than young Davie was in the story, I
hiked through the heather in the opposite
direction — across the moor and down
the glen. For me it was the beginning
of a life-long love affair with geology.
This part of Scotland is where the last
ice sheet of the Quaternary glaciations
wasted away. Relieved of the weight, the
country is still rebounding, rising at a rate
of about 10 centimeters per century. And
as a consequence, this is the very highest
of the Highlands, with the tallest peak in
Britain, Ben Nevis (1,345 meters), just
north of the Moor.
Some 400 million years before these
Quaternary events (and unsuspected byme at the time of my hike), the site was
the scene of a collision between Laurasia
(proto-North America) and Baltica (the
northern European plate), with a minor
collection of continental bits and pieces
(Avalonia) in between. Subduction con-
sumed Avalonia beneath Laurasia, and
in Glencoe you can see the calc-alkaline
volcanic rocks that accompanied the pro-
cess. Five major eruptions evacuated some
1,000 to 3,000 cubic kilometers of material
from an underground magma chamber,
and the resulting collapse structure, or
caldera, was of the same massive scale as
Yellowstone Caldera in Wyoming.
More accessible to the nongeological
visitor is the experience of wild nature,
Scottish style. “The Rough Guide to the
Scottish Highlands and Islands ” describes
Rannoch Moor and its environs as “unin-
habited and uninhabitable peat bogs,
lochs, heather hillocks, strewn lumps
of granite and a few gnarled Caledonian
pine.” It is arguably the last remaining
true wilderness in Britain, and is now des-
ignated a Site of Special Scientific Interest
as well as a National Nature Reserve.
I count myself lucky that I avoided
Huey, Dewey and Louie’s brush with
death when they encountered the Hound
of the Whiskervilles on Rannoch Moor
near Castle McDuck. And as I hikedthrough the heather, I was also lucky
to be free of any threat from Redcoats.
But one pursuer that continually caught
me was the “Great Scottish Soaker”:
cloudbursts that are ready to deliver a
mini-Niagara onto your head any day of
the year. Bentley concludes his article: “a
visit to the North West Highlands is not
only a delightful recreational sojourn,
but, for a geologist, an intellectual pil-
grimage as well.” That’s well said, but
to encourage the inner masochist who
hides inside many a field geologist, he
should have added that you can look
forward to many miserable hours soaked
to your undies.
Still, you are unlikely to reach the
nadir of the character in Neil Munro’s
novel “John Splendid,” who said that if he
had the choice of staying for an extended
time in this region or of being hung from
the gallows, he would tell the hangman
to go fetch his rope.(LIW[SVXLMWE+IPPS[SJ
XLI,ISPSKMGEPSGMIX]SJ
&QIVMGE ERH 5VSJIWWSV
*QIVMXYWSJXLI9RMZIVWMX]
SJ,YIPTL(EREHE*QEMP
[GLIW[SV%YSKYIPTLGE
8LIZMI[WI\TVIWWIHEVI
LMWS[R&LMOIXLVSYKLXLIGSXXMWL-MKLPERHWGSYPHFIEHIPMKLXJYPWSNSYVRSVEQEWSGLMWXMG
QMWIVEFPITPSHXLVSYKLVEMR
(VIHMX &PI\'IVKIV(('=3(ȶȉ(VIHMX &RXSRMS
2EVXMRI^(SVXM^EWTEKIȰȏ•4GXSFIVȶȉȦȮ• EARTH • [[[IEVXLQEKE^MRISVK,ISPSKMG(SPYQR