NW Highlands trip report - part 1

A few days before leaving for a weeks holiday in Gairloch in the NW of Scotland and the long range weather forecast made for grim reading - low cloud, wind and rain, sigh. It actually turned out not too bad.

A good day in Torridon and a view from Beinn Eighe over the imbricate thrust stack.

This area of Scotland has some outstanding geology with good exposures of archaean continental crust :

BGS bedrock geology - Lewisian complex

and excellent exposures of Caledonian orogeny thrust belt courtesy of dark and light coloured rocks :

BGS bedrock geology - Moine thrustbelt

and glacial landforms to name but a few.

Now for landscape photographers on holiday with their spouse, there are some compromises to be made between desired vs mutually acceptable activities. The first proper day of the holiday was predicted to have the best day of weather, an enquiry to the charter boats revealed a trip to see the dolphins and whales so Nic went with that and very good it was too, she saw a pod of Short Beaked Dolphins and then a group of Minke Whales, free from my chaffeuring duties I had a wander over the eastern limb of the Tollie antiform, wondered why I hadn't bought any midge repellent and hoping the wind wouldn't drop. The reason for my wander was twofold a scouting trip for photography locations and to walk the geology, before returning to pick Nic up from the boat trip.

Foliated archaean gneiss  top left, intruded by a 'scourie' dyke (dark rock with white lichens) middle  andbottom left and both intruded by pegmatite (red/pink rock) right. Compass for scale. 

The compromises did not end there that day, with not enough time for an excursion up the hills and Nic likes beaches so putting my landscape principles to one side and we made an excursion to a nearby beach.

High energy and low energy beach morphology

Sand ripples and dune blowout

The light was good and I'll confess to feeling somewhat wistful as the last light played over the distant hill tops. The glimmer of hope was that the forecast wasn't quite as grim for midweek. So, acquire some midge repellent and fingers crossed for similar weather later on in the week.