91热爆

The great thing about this time of year is that you can go out late and still get lots of daylight. Ardmore Forest north of Tobermory is a favourite place of mine with loads of interesting stuff to explore. Dynamic as well - over the past year or so, forestry operations have cleared a lot of trees and the views are now quite different.

Tuesday evening and I headed towards the new lighthouse at the Point - forestry tracks most of the way and a rough path to get to the light.

This is where my Geology class had their first field trip - there is a lot of typical Tertiary igneous geology in a small area, the walking is fairly easy and it is all quite accessible. The students claimed that they enjoyed it, certainly they came back for more of the same!

So what's to see?

Nice sun going down over Ardnamurchan:



The lighthouse - all very high tech with solar panels:


A rather fine dyke cuts across the shore here. Not much scale, I know but it is about 2 ft across:



Further on , there is a sill, which has a very distinctive top surface:


The same sill from further along, looking at the side of it:


Just under the lighthouse there is another very thin sill cutting through the basalt:


The edges of this particular sill show a black glassy material called tachylite - quite common in Mull:


It was now about 10:30 pm and time to head back to the car. There are a couple of really neat examples fo what is called spheroidal oe "onion skin" weathering in the basalt beside the track. The rock breaks down in concentric shells, leaving these cannon ball looking things behind:




Finally a last look to the north after the sun had set. Time for bed!