GeoWorld Travel Scotland Tour Geology Trip and Holiday

Itinerary

Day 1: Arrive in Edinburgh, Capital of Scotland. Our hotel is on the tram line 15 minutes from the international airport and 15 minutes from the city centre. It is also 200m from a train station.

Day 2: Siccar Point, Forth Bridge World Heritage Site and Cairngorms National Park. Our tour starts with a bang, visiting what has been described as the World's most important geosite: Siccar Point.  Siccar Point is an unconformity with Devonian sediments lying on Silurian sediments. It is at this location in 1788 that Father of Geology, James Hutton first realised the enormity of geological time. Siccar Point is 1 hour drive east of Edinburgh. After visiting Siccar Point we double back to the Edinburgh area having lunch at the  Forth Bridge World Heritage Site. We then head  north towards the Highlands, where all the other geosites of the tour are located. Our first stop on our way north is the village of Birnam which  is situated on the Highland Boundary Fault, an important geological fault which marks the entry to the Highlands. In Birnam we see the famous Birnam Oak which is mentioned in William Shakespeare's play: Macbeth. We then continue on to the Queens View where we can view  Schiehallion Mountain. The mountain is an important geosite  because in 1776 it was used in an experiment to estimate the mass of the earth. We then enter the Cairngorms National Park and spend the night at Aviemore.

Day 3: Cairngorms National Park, Loch Ness and the North West Highlands Geopark.  Our first stop of the day is  the shore of Loch Ness. The loch lies on the Great Glen Fault which separates the Grampian Highlands from the North West Highlands. This strike-slip fault is about 300 miles long and it has a complex movement history; comparatively recent Ice Age glacial erosion along the fault has formed the loch. The loch is by volume the largest freshwater body  in the British Isles, containing more water than all the lakes of England and Wales combined! The loch is best known for the alleged sightings of the cryptozoological monster, Nessie, which we will also try to spot! From Loch Ness we pass through Inverness, the capital of the Highlands, to reach Cromarty on the Black Isle, which is actually a peninsula rather than an island. Our reason for visiting Cromarty is the story of Hugh Miller who was Scotland's leading Victorian palaeontologist. He discovered many Devonian fossil fish, several Silurian sea scorpions and has a North Sea oilfield named after him. In Cromarty we will visit an outcrop of Devonian limestone from which Miller once collected fossil fish and we will visit his former home which is now a museum containing some of his fossils. After lunch in Cromarty we travel on to Lairg to visit the  Ferrycroft Visitor Centre where we learn all about a huge meteorite crater that has recently been found to be lying underneath the town. We then continue to the North West Highlands Geopark, and visit the famous Knockan Crag. Here we learn about the Highland Controversy and it was resolved by discovering the world's first identified thrust fault: The Moine Thrust. After spending an hour and a half here, which includes looking at information  boards, a geological walk and being able to put our hands on the actual thrust plane, we continue to the fishing village of Ullapool, which despite its small size is the largest settlement for many miles around. We will be spending the next two nights in Ullapool and arrive early enough for you to explore the area.

Day 4: The North West Highlands Geopark. Our first stop of the day is at Stronechrubie Cliffs where we see imbricated thrust slices in Cambrian dolostone and a dyke. This is followed by the classic sequence of Cambrian rocks along the Loch Assynt shoreline, which we were introduced to at the Knockan Crag visitor centre. We then stop at a site to view a 'double unconformity' where Cambrian rock unconformably lies on one billion year old Torridonian sandstone which itself unconformably lies on three billion year old Lewisian gneiss. Following this we reach Glencoul and one of the most gazed-upon views in Scottish geology; here the Ben More Thrust, forces 3 billion year old Lewisian gneiss over Cambrian sedimentary rocks. Next we visit  Scourie to see the oldest rocks in the British Isles: the Scourie Gneiss (part of the Lewisian gneisses) which are 3 billion years old and are cut by the remarkable Scourie Dykes that are 2 billion years old. This is followed by the 'Multi-coloured Rock Stop' which is Laxfordian gneiss (also part of the Lewisian) and cut by Scourie dykes and granite dykes. This stop is also the most northern point of the tour and from here we head south, stopping for lunch at the Rock Stop Cafe in the Northwest Highlands Geopark Visitor Centre. From here we return to Loch Assynt and head west along the loch stopping at an unconformity between Torridonian sandstone and the much older Lewisian gneiss before reaching a viewpoint of the Assynt Foreland Mountains which have been voted by the British Geological Survey to be the UK and Ireland's number one Geosite. From here we continue to the villages of Stoer and Clachtoll. Here we again see Torridonian sediments lying unconformably on a surface of Lewisian gneiss that has extreme topography, with deep canyons. We also take a 30 minute walk (each way) to see the ejecta deposits of the Lairg meteorite. We then return to Ullapool for a second night, optionally stopping at Ardvreck castle on the shores of Loch Assynt enroute.

Day 5: The road to the Isle of  Skye, and a boat trip to Loch Coruisk in the heart of Skye's Black Cuillin. Today we head south towards the Isle of Skye. En-route we stop at the magnificent Corrieshalloch Gorge, where melt water at the end of the Ice Age carved a deep gorge as the surrounding land was rising upwards due to isostatic rebound. Our next stop is  for a photo of Eilean Donan Castle, before we cross the road bridge to the Isle of Skye, where we stop for a picnic lunch. We then continue to the pretty fishing village of Elgol, where we take a boat trip with Misty Isles to Loch Coruisk in the heart of the Black Cuillin Mountains. These mountains are perhaps the most spectacular in Britain and are made up of the eroded magma chamber from a volcano that was active during the splitting of the Atlantic 55 million years ago. We have 1.5 hours ashore to examine the layered gabbros, see many glacial erratics and admire the glaciated scenery. There is also the opportunity to see many seals. On our return to Elgol, we stop to see honeycomb weathering in the Jurassic sandstones. We then spend the night in Skye's main town Portree.

Day 6: The Isle Of Skye's Dinosaurs. The morning is spent on the Trotternish Peninsula in the north of the Isle of Skye. Our first stop is the Quirang where we see the largest mass movement landslide in Britain. Here a 2km long, 300m thick slab of Paleogene lavas slipped over weaker Jurassic sediments at the end of the last Ice Age.  We then visit the Dinosaur Museum at Staffin, where we will meet Dugie Ross, the discoverer of many of the Skye dinosaur bones and trackways. The Isle of Skye has five different dinosaur trackway sites and is the best place in the world to find mid-Jurassic dinosaurs. Three of these sites occur at Brothers' Point (Rubha nam Brathairean) which is our next stop.  Site one has 35 tracks in three different trackways, site two has 49 tracks in two different trackways and site three has 18 tracks in two different trackways. After a brief stop at Kilt Rock, where we can see a Paleogene sill intruded between Jurassic sediments, we head south, passing the Old Man of Storr and, later, the Red Cuillin Mountains before reaching Armadale. Here we take the ferry back to the mainland of Scotland and drive on to Acharacle in the Lochaber Geopark, where we spend the next two nights.

**Stops on days 5 & 6: the dinosaur tracks  can only be seen on a low tide, if the tide is unfavourable on day 6 we will visit them on day 5 instead switching the other stops around accordingly**

Day 7: Fingal's Cave - Staffa, puffins and Ardnamurchan volcano. We start the day driving through the Lochaber Geopark to reach Kilchoan on the edge of the Ardnamurchan volcano. Here we board a boat and take a tour to the legendary Fingal's Cave on the island of Staffa. Here we see the incredible columnar basalt. On the tour we also stop at the island of Lunga in the Treshnish Isles to see puffins and thousands of breeding guillemots (please see the wildlife photo gallery below). On our return to Kilchoan we examine the Ardnamurchan volcano which like the Black Cuillin is the eroded magma chamber of a Tertiary volcano. We then return to Acharacle for a second night.

Day 8: The Lochaber Geopark, Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park and  Edinburgh. First thing in the morning we pass through the village of Strontian after which the element Strontium is named, and then we then reach the Corran ferry, which takes us and our vehicle across Loch Linnhe and the Great Glen Fault. We then stop at Ballachulish where we visit a slate quarry. After the quarry we head into the dramatic Glencoe. This spectacular glaciated valley is cut into the remains of an explosive Devonian volcano that once had an enormous eruption. In Glencoe we stop at several sites, seeing rhyolite, waterfalls and the amazing views. We also learn about the violent history and the Massacre of Glencoe. We then leave the Lochaber Geopark and travel on through the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park making a short comfort stop, before stopping for lunch at the Falkirk Wheel. This is an ingenious lift that raises boats from one canal level up to another. From here we continue to the city of Edinburgh where we have one final stop: Hutton's Section on Salisbury Crags. Salisbury Crags and Arthur's Seat are the remains of a Carboniferous volcano and are right in the heart of Edinburgh. At Hutton's Section we see how dolerite forced its way into the surrounding sedimentary rocks as a sill. James Hutton was the first to describe this process. We then end our tour at a nearby hotel where we spend the night.

Day 9: Edinburgh and Departure. The tour officially ends after breakfast and you are free to depart, perhaps by taking a taxi to Waverley station for train connections to the rest of the UK and tram connections to the airport. However it is highly recommended that you stay one or two extra days in Edinburgh to explore on your own. The city centre is a World Heritage Site and is built on two Carboniferous volcanoes sculpted by glacial ice. Edinburgh Castle is built on top of one of the volcanic vents and Arthur's Seat is the other volcano. The National Museum has an excellent geological exhibition as does the Dynamic Earth Museum. For fit people, climbing Arthur's Seat is a fantastic thing to do. Additionally the National Mining Museum of Scotland is 10 miles from the city and can be reached by bus, train or taxi.