Glasgow trip part 2: the isle of Arran!

As I mentioned in my last post, the weather on my recent trip to Scotland was fantastic. My hosts, well versed in the art of caring and feeding for a geologist (and themselves not averse to a bit of fresh air of course!) kindly organised a trip to the island of Arran for me. I was very excited at the prospect for many reasons. Firstly, islands just have an intrinsic coolness factor because they are islands. Secondly, I honestly am not sure when the last time was before this recent trip that I actually saw the sea from ground level. Thirdly, Arran is famous as somewhat of a mecca for British geology students and I had always considered it a mark of slight shame that I had never even touched its shores.

Part of the coolness of islands is that you can use boats to get to them! I have always lived far enough from the sea or other big stretches of water that ferries hold a definite excitement. They combine being big cool machines with the prospect of a journey across the waves AND there's usually a cool view to boot! True to form I thoroughly enjoyed the ferry trip over to Arran, staying out for the whole trip despite the rather strong winds and gazing at the approaching island. You can get a pretty good idea of the geology of the whole place from that distance too, would be a good point to have the first stop of a field trip.

Arran is so famous because it contains in its 30km length a swathe of geology reaching from 500 million years ago to the recent past, encompassing sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic geology of great variety in one easily accessible area. Of course, we only had time to wander over a tiny bit of it, and in any case some of the other people didn't seem to think that we were ONLY there to look at the rocks. Weirdos. In any case, we settled on walking round the shore from our landing point of Brodick, making our goal a prominent castle (of the more stately-home kind) around the bay.

It was absolutely gorgeous sunny weather, and my main impression was of all the different colours on display. The rocks (Permian New Red sandstones) were wonderfully varying hues of red, weathering to a red-tinged sandy beach next to Brodick itself. Seen across the deep blue-green of the sea in sunlight were the much whiter sands more typical of the west coast of Scotland, studded with bright greens from the seaweed and grasses in the sand dunes, and loomed over by the dark greens, purples, browns and greys of the mountains (well in the UK we would say mountains) above.

We walked all the way round the bay, reached the castle and then headed back, stopping to a local bakery to eat a delicious macaroni and cheese pie(!!!). This tasty tasty food nearly scuppered my plan to be awake for the trip home, but I overcame the sleepiness and was able to once again admire the incredible panorama on our trip back to the mainland. Enjoy the bumper pack of photos available at this magic link!

Bis bald,

der Tom.