When you are out walking you sometimes begin to wonder how certain areas came to be as they are. It may be a strange rock formation, or a spectacular rolling landscape that sets you thinking about how these things were formed. When you find out a little about the geology involved you begin to understand the terrain, not just pass through it. You feel more at one with Mother Nature and in some way it adds to your enjoyment of the walk. So why not take a little time out to read about the geology that you will soon be walking through? The geology of Scotland is so varied and fascinating that teams from Universities come on summer vacation to study the landscape.

The First Rock Star

The man known as the father of Geology was a Scotsman named James Hutton, who studied 'Siccar Point' ( which has become known as 'Hutton's Unconformity' ), on Scotland's east coast in Berwickshire. He came to understand the geological processes involved in forming our planet. He was the first person to grasp the idea of geological time and to realise that huge temperatures and the molten state of the inner Earth were responsible for creating new rock, moving the Earth's crust, shifting the continents and that this was a continuous, ongoing process. He published his Theory of the Earth in 1788. Visit the | The Scots | page for a list of other famous Scottish inventers and discoverers.

Scotland's mainland is 275 miles / 440km from north ( Cape Wrath ) to south ( Mull of Galloway ), it is 154 miles / 248km at its widest point ( Buchan Ness to Applecross ), and at its narrowest is only 25 miles / 40 km wide between the estuaries of the rivers Clyde and Forth. The coastline of mainland Scotland is 6,200 miles / 9,978 km long, with 787 islands, mostly on the west coast. The country has an area of 77,097 sq km / 29,767 sq miles. It makes up over 30% of the area of the United Kingdom - with less than 10% of the UK population. It does not have any point lower than sea level, with the highest point being the mountain 'Ben Nevis' 1343 m / 4,406 ft above sea level. The West Highland Way passes very near to the foot of Ben Nevis, which is not only the highest mountain in Scotland but also in the UK. The more adventurous walkers end their journey on the West Highland Way by staying the night in Fort William and the next day trekking the well worn path to the summit of Ben Nevis.

Movers n Shakers

For its size Scotland has the most varied geology and landscape on planet Earth. How did that come about? Things started moving 600 Million years ago when Scotland was south of the Equator. It was part of a large continent called 'Laurentia' that included North America and Greenland. Knowledge of that fact had a modern, practical outcome - it led to the discovery of oil in the North Sea between Scotland and Norway. Even although the rocks in Scotland and in Norway could not contain oil, scientists knew that the bed of the North Sea between them was once adjacent to Greenland where oil producing conditions existed and so they began their explorations, eventually discovering the oil fields. During much of the Laurentia period England was on the opposite side of the world and Scotland and England were separated by the 'Iapetus Ocean', which was larger than today's Atlantic Ocean. It's known that Scotland was on the coast of the continent as we have massive limestone deposits laid down in a fairly shallow tropical sea. Scientists have also found fossils of little sea creatures that are only found in N. America and in Scotland, so they can be sure of the ancient connection. 500 Million years ago the 'Iapetus Ocean' began to close, causing a lot of volcanic activity in Scotland, volcanoes such as 'Arthur's Seat' in Edinburgh, the 'Bass Rock' on the east coast and the 'Campsie Fells' near the start of the WHW. These volcanoes were active for about 5 million years.

450 million years ago Laurentia joined with 'Baltica' ( parts of modern-day Europe, Scandinavia and Siberia ) and formed a new super landmass called 'Larussia' or the 'Old Red Sandstone Continent'. The oldest air-breathing creature ever discovered ( a millipede less than 1cm long that lived in Larussia around 420 million years ago ), was found in Stonehaven in Aberdeenshire Scotland. Scientists from the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale University said that the find was enormously significant because it is the earliest evidence of a creature living on dry land rather than in the oceans. The Stonehaven millipede named 'Pneumodesmus newmani' - in honour of Michael Newman who discovered the fossil in a rock on the foreshore at Cowie Harbour, to the north of Stonehaven - is 20 million years older than any air breathing creature previously found on terra firma and has forced scientists to adjust their understanding of when land life began.

The Crash

400 Million years ago England crashed into Scotland and threw up mountains that were probably as high as the Alps, but would be eroded over vast periods of time and later ground down by Ice ages lasting 2 million years. 360 million years ago Scotland sat on the Equator, the Glasgow - Edinburgh area covered by a hot steamy tropical rainforest. 330 million years ago most of Scotland was underwater. Part of a Whale backbone was discovered in a field near Stirling Castle and the worlds best preserved shark fossil from the Carboniferous period was found in a garden in Bearsden - the town next to Milngavie where the WHW begins. This is the same town where the Roman Wall was built and the Bathhouse ruins can be seen. For over 70 million years the land was a swamp, with swamp forests that became the coal deposits that would later drive the Industrial revolution, dinosaurs roamed Scotland although only 7 species of dinosaur fossils have been found in Scottish rocks. 250 million years ago as Scotland continued to move north, earthquakes rocked it and the land became a desert. The desert sand would later become the beautiful sandstone blocks that would be used to build Glasgow and other towns. After the dry period huge rivers deposited even more sand over northern parts of the country. Visit the | Information Page | for more background on the West Highland Way route. 40 Million years ago Scotland broke away from North America and joined Europe.

Ice Weight

200,000 years ago Scotland was covered by ice almost a mile/1.6km thick, whose great weight pushed the land down into the Earths crust. Later a glacier to the north carved Glen Coe. Another began just above Rannoch Moor, shaped the mountains, hills and moors along the West Highland Way and gouged out Loch Lomond. When the ice melted and the land was freed from its weight, it began to rise again and is still rising to this day. The fastest rate of rise in the region affected by the ice sheets is in the Northern Baltic near Scandinavia, which rises at the rate of a meter a century. The area with the fastest rate of rise in Scotland is centred on Rannoch Moor where the ice was thickest and therefore heaviest. The south of the UK, which did not have these large ice deposits, is slowly sinking. In London the water table is now higher than the Underground railway system and the Government has had to build the 'Thames Barrier' - an engineering structure to protect the city from flooding at high tides. Visit the | Weather Page | for a description of Scotland's modern climate.

The Ridge

The fault line or 'divergent-plate boundary' responsible for moving Scotland away from the Americas is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This is a 10,000 miles / 16,000 km volcanic line from north of Iceland to the Antarctic, where material from the Earths core is forced up to produce new land. As new seafloor forms the earth's tectonic plates move apart in opposite directions, developing a rift where the Earth's crust stretches. This thinning releases pressure on the rock below the crust, causing a drop in pressure that melts the already extremely hot mantle rock. As it melts it drops in density and is pulled up from the inner earth. This up flow has produced the world's largest mountain range stretching more than 3,728 miles / 6,000 km, between Iceland and the Azores off Africa's west coast, with mountains ( measured from base to top ) taller than Mt. Everest. This ridge is still active and still causing Scotland to move East and North America to move west, at about the rate of 7 or 8 centimetres a year, roughly the rate a fingernail grows at - so each time you cut your fingernails you have a measure of the speed of the drifting continents. Today N. America is about 1/4 mile further away from Scotland than it was when Columbus discovered the New World. Currently Scotland is also heading north and it is predicted that it will continue to do so over the next 200 million years.

Hard Rock

The Highlands survived millions of years of weathering and Ice Ages because much of it is made from Dalradian and Moine rocks that are hardwearing and difficult to grind down. Great plugs of solid granite like Ben Nevis and other mountains in the region stood their ground while any soft rock was scrapped away by the ice, leaving bare granite. All the weathering has made good climbing sites, which although not of great height still offer a real challenge to the climber's skill, especially when they are combined with the wetness of our climate. The difference between the hard rock of the highlands and the softer rock of the lowlands can be seen at Loch Lomond; north of 'Ross Point' the ancient glacier could only gouge out a relatively narrow strip of rarely more than one mile / 1500 metres wide. Here there are few islands, the loch is deeper and the shore is made up of steep mountains. As you come down towards the Lowlands, Loch Lomond widens out considerably - 5 miles/8.05 km at its widest point - is studded with islands and is comparatively shallow - showing that the glacier could gouge out a wide strip of the softer rock in its path and with this widening it could dump more of the material it was carrying. The difference can be clearly seen on the | Route Maps | of the West Highland Way.

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