Trekking Scotland: in Brief Memoir

As I sit in the airport at Glasgow, the starting point of it all, I’m trying to decide how to reflect on this trip.

The tables around me are steadily filling, fussy children are nearby and I can’t seem to quiet my brain in the ways that I’d wish for it to be soothed enough to write an artful blog. More than ever, every spicket of unwanted noise around me seems to ping off of my skin like hail on a car’s vulnerable paint.

Scotland.

10 days from home, 9 days of straight expedition, back to back with little room to assort more than notes here and there on geology terms, core memories, whimsical moments, and lots of 3-second shots.

From the airport, we hit the road, still in the clothes and hygienic standards of two days prior. In Duncryne, I began taking my notes (which I discuss briefly in my entry from the first day), mostly discussing the gloom that hangs over you when you’ve gone so long without sleep and a shower.

On we went, into towering mountains and remote Scottish landscapes, pressing on until the cities were but a brief presence from our airport hours.

As we sat in that van through the progressing hours, the blanket unraveled into rolling hills of green and yellow, where the yellow, I would come to learn, was “Scottish Broom” (rumored to smell like coconut sunscreen… which I still do not believe.) Regardless of whichever quaint, stone-laden town we passed through, the mountains were a continuous presence, as were the sheep dotting them. Many lambs accompanied their mothers. One of our first stops was a coffee/dining stop at a sheep farm with a significant cliff in the surrounding landscape. Here, I tried an Irn Bru which became the rave of my Paleo professor through the trip— how would I describe it? A soda that tastes like banana laffy taffy. Additionally at this stop, I had a lamb give my hand kisses, which soothed the aches of exhaustion.

I recall my professor noting that some of the landscapes resembled those of Pennsylvania, which I could agree with at some points, and others, not. Pennsylvania could easily resemble NZ or Scotland , if our hills back home did not have trees concealing their topographies. The Highlands wildly trumped home's mountains in height and solitude, as the lands were very destitute and rugged in some parts in ways that I’ve not seen since my last ventures abroad. Restroom and coffee stops were few in number, but were taken advantage of greatly in those early days.

Traversing the highlands are where a heinous creature such as the Scottish midge exists, and born-of-the-land appearances are the norm. I would not feel a second thought about my dusted hiking boots nor wind blown tendrils atop my head until reaching Edinburgh. The norm of the mountains was to dress as if you were summiting a mountain each day of the week or herding sheep that afternoon. Stretchy clothes, a T-shirt you can count on getting sweaty in, hair undone or out of the face, and above all, hiking boots.

The mountains were remnants of the volcanic and magmatic activities that once dotted Scotland. Ben Nevis, the significant mountain that I forced myself to climb for satisfaction of my perfectionism (and pure spite), is an extinct volcano (Devonian age), which boasts several different volcanic lithologies in its route. This being said, there are varying granites, agglomerates, andesites, and basalts. Climbing an extinct mammoth of Earth's past was one for the books, and if you're curious about its pathways and vistas, I'd recommend this video for a tour: https://youtu.be/arerUMYWqTE?si=zd_7VIJNgOCH8kOW 

view from the summit of ben nevis

The volcanic theme was persistent as we worked our way out of the rolling and enigmatic Highlands, up northward to Skye. The Isle of Skye was the epitome of volcanic lands, glacial carving, and coastal beauty. Skye is one of the major Isles within the Hebrides terrane of Scotland. The Hebrides are remants of the most Ancient Earth terranes that scientists have come to name, as the landscapes dotting it are fragmented from the Archean age (and crafted from Earth's mannerisms of that time). I heavily anticipated this Isle, as I wrote about the incredible Lava Series (very geochemically complex), which it boasts in its rocks, and changes in our Earth's methods of subduction that are demonstrated in rocks such as the Lewisian Gneisses.  

Our group's primary roads were through these countrysides that often had towering mountains (from these more active volcanic periods), like cloaks around the road. I was able to spot the gabbro-laden mountains I wrote about, like The Cuillins, which was surreal to see in person rather than as a mysterious entity to write about. At one point, the highway horseshoed around the interior slopes of the jagged peaks around us, which you could only see the tips of them with a craned neck and your face pressed closely to the window. Often, as I was coming down from my high regarding my successful summit of Ben Nevis, I'd tell myself, "I've now conquered something taller than that." 

Our group came to lodge in a backpacking hostel in a smaller coastal town, which we'd combed the beaches of for fossils. I collected numerous shells, ceramic bits, and a particular blue piece of sea glass that fascinated me. Little public parks had pathways which toted the long series of lithologies known to Skye and the sequence in which they came to be present on the island. After nights of card games and walking the nearby coast with my friend Sarah, the group would come to spend their last morning scrambling the low-tide ocean shore for more fossils as well as interesting rock-scapes usually hidden by deep water. Sea urchins, relentless gastropods, sea anemone, and many other little creatures dotted our rocks, but were good hosts for the group picking through their homes. The fossil search was unsuccessful aside from my professor finding an ammonoid-packed rock, some bivales and gastropods, and other miniature fragments which were not unusual for Pennsylvanian geologists to find. I found myself being tested on my memories of terminology important to paleobiologists: Fodichnia, aperture, siphuncle-- anatomy and feeding patterns which we could observe in real time with what we did find. Further reminders that I am a rock specialist, not so much a fossil specialist. 

The Isle of Skye was considered the "tip" of our ventures in the island, where we began the pathway eastward and back down the island. I awoke from a van nap to a stop along the Moine Thrust Fault. At this outcrop was an exposure of the lithologies which I'd studied, metamorphosed sedimentary rocks. The Moine Thrust Fault was the boundary splitting the North Chapter from the Middle, and from this point on, it was glens and lochs. The lochs often had pebbly-shores and gloomy fronts. A highlight was our stop at a black-water waterfall site, where the rocks bordering the water had prominent isoclinal folds. Upon climbing down to the smoothed stones over which the rushing water once flowed, we discovered the rocks were quite comfy to recline on, the curves and polished surfaces making a great bed to curl up in.

I hadn't realized just how different it'd be once we crossed out of the countryside. Civilization once more didn't feel so distant; tourist presence grew, and no longer was it multiple hours before you saw another leisurely person (lest they were a backpacker, on the same rugged route as you). Inverness was our first in-city stay, our first Scottish city experience. It was quite pleasant to choose our dinner, a pizzeria deemed "Cheese and Tomatin," where I sat with a select few friends and my professor, Dr. Powell, for a specialty pizza dinner and my first iced drink in 4 days. The walk was my first taste of the architecture I'd soon see in Edinburgh, which I was quite fascinated by. Inverness felt like what I'd picture London to be, except smaller. After a dinner of having a Scottish myth assigned to us like tarot cards (I was the "Veil of Glencoe, a misty mountain) whilst warm and cozy in the tavern's upper "attic-like" lounge, we went for gelato. I tried a coconut flavor based on the candy "Bounty." The city people weren't overly bothersome, but as the night went on, we could tell we were growing cold towards the rain and the pub-hoppers, especially once a drunk older man (attempted-to) cat call the group of young girls walking behind their professor, whom my friend Sarah scolded by yelling "NO." This was my only negative experience in any of the Scottish cities, but by Aberdeen, I'd adopted a much more non-approachable front. 

At our hostel, we played more card games, as cards were the most utilized entertainment on this trip, aside from phones in our downtime. The hostel also had a friendly resident cat named George, who slept in the lounge peacefully among the young backpackers. Sarah and I would come to despise a man who we could overhear mentioning, multiple times, that he was from Kentucky, but lived in Cincinnati, but no, he was from Kentucky. But wait, did he mention he was from Kentucky? It became our inside joke for days to come, a character added to our books to plot against other bothersome characters we'd come to remember. 

hostel cat george

Academic life resumed as we traversed to Aberdeen. In our array of destinations, we stopped at the Fairy Glen (quite mystical, but no fae on our watch), frolicked by Loch Ness, observed prehistoric cairn ritual sites from 4,000 years ago, and walked the lands of Culloden Cuil Lodair, a battle site hosting the ghosts of combat between Jacobites and their government. On we went through rural farmlands, stopping at the Randolph's Leap waterfalls. Randolph's Leap had beautiful metamorphosed rocks and micaceous belts mimicking the ptygmatic folds of the rest of the lithologies. It was evident that the rocks had undergone significant structural stressors, pushing them beyond the threshold of ductile deformation while subsurface. It was beautiful to see a solid surface marked by such fluid movements, like pink granite worms embedded in the grey stones (schists, I'm assuming now). Along the way out was a beach with glacial stones carried out to the edge of the beach, where sand took its place once more, and one could mistake Scotland for a typical North Atlantic beach with the vast expanse of the North Sea before you. 

fairy glen

ptygmatic folding

Aberdeen hosted my first "Fish and Chips" dinner of the trip, which was quite good for my first array of fried food in a while. One might not realize it, but fried-food methods are different in the UK. It's flakier and lighter, but still crispy and good. Later on, I dined with the girls at "Heavenly Desserts," an aesthetically pleasing (and at first glance, boujee) dessert stop where I had a rose and lychee milk tea with mochi. 

Following Aberdeen, our morning began with Dunnottar Castle, ruins of a fortress posted on conglomerate cliffs. My professor joked with the group as we wondered about the reasoning for placement of the castle's site. Did they think it'd be easier to keep it on the mainland? Perhaps, but it just HAD to exactly be on the stretch of cliff that was exhaustingly uphill and hard to access. At this incredibly photogenic site, though, with its rolling hills of Scottish broom and sun rays beaming down on the slopes, Mary Queen of Scots, King Charles II, and William Wallace once roamed. The 17th century ruins were neglected for quite some time, from 1715 to 1925 presumably, until it once again opened to the public as tourist site. Once getting our fix of the castle's vista, we traversed down to the beach to observe the conglomerates up close. Dalradian and Grampian (orogenic events) series clasts had clumped into the stones of this cliff, solidified over a geologic time scale to create the solid, unyielding landscape before us. Although conglomerates are sedimentary, the meta-volcanic clasts originated from mountains close to where we stood, and therefore were much more resistant to erosion. In the discussion of their placement, it was learned that two mountain-building (orogenic) events yielded not only their placement in the area, but also tilted the rocks significantly, as a second-hand event. Rocks packed with amygdules, quartz faces, vibrant red and green coloring, and geode-like appearances held our attention for so much time that other tourists near us on the beach began to wonder if the rocks were something to take pictures of, as well. 

Coastal cliffs became a continuous presence in our stops. I learned of a bird called the Razorbill in our search for Puffins, and captured a picture of a Razorbill looking cutely at the cliff above him or her. At one of our sea cliff stops, Arbroath Cliffs, we finally spotted Torridonian Red sandstones, another lithology I wrote about in the assembled field guide. There was a Late Devonian unit which was emplaced when Scotland resided at the equator on the global map. Above these flaggy, fine red sandstones was an unconformably-placed conglomerate bed and an erosional contact between the two. The unconformity posed the idea that there was a gap in time between the two rock types' depositions. Much of the area would come to be discussed as a "dune" depositional area, where a sandy dune environment once occupied the coastal land on which we stood and carved the cross-stratified rocks before us significantly, in odd ways. Lines of cross-bed sediment indicated this in the beautifully vibrant red sands of the outcrop, speckled with pebbles from upper conglomerates which deposited atop the sands. Coarser material falls in the in-between of the dunes as ripples, 2D or 3D, form around it, depending on the velocity of the wind. Steeply-tilted outcrops met the ocean, signifying further tectonic activity imposed on the lithified wind-tracks. Arbroath was quite beautiful for its odd combinations of erosional surfaces, including cliffs separating from the main fragments like lone ocean conquerors and tunnel-like holes and caves for the waves to crash through below our feet. 

arbroath cliffs

On our big "Siccar Point" day, we began by trekking a beach worth a couple miles, observing more red sandstones (some even bleached, deemed the "cheetah print" phenomenon) paralleled by an igneous sill intruding on the sedimentary rocks. Again, Scotland proved to be tectonically active at this site as we observed anticline-syncline folds (always a pair), where the anticline portion was slightly kinked up like a garden hose. Further down the beach was a large tuff section. Tuff is a rock composed of volcanic ash that has solidified into a sharp, glassy rock. This particular tuff had igneous rocks in it, which fooled us into thinking it was a sedimentary conglomerate until we came to realize it was lacking some typical sed features. It was quite sharp to scale-- thankfully, I did not sacrifice my leggings on the way down. In these activities, we got to observe the ghosts of a once-active volcanic site, an explosive one, even. The trek back was long and draining, but we all mustered the energy as we began onward to the most important place of the trip, Siccar Point.

Some geologists go their entire career without seeing the birthplace of deep geologic time, all geologists' understanding of timescales as we know it. Not only is it the birthplace of geologic time, but also the confirmation of the Plutonism school of thought as it used to be called, the understanding that Earth began as a magma-laden surface. This school of thought countered and defeated Neptunism, the idea that the Earth began as an ocean and gradually spit out land fragments/sediment. All rocks come from lava, and all rocks return to lava. Braving a 50-75ish foot cliff edge, I slid (literally) my butt down to the rocks before me (after some hesitation at first). This was Hutton's point, Siccar Point, and I'd regret it if I missed the chance to lay my hands on where he gathered the last evidence of his scientific theory, 30+ years in the making. The fundamental site itself is constituted of Silurian grey wackes, deformed and folded, overlain by Devonian to Mississippian-Pennsylvanian (time periods) breccia/sandstones. The sandstone-breccia mix is laid on the greywackes in an unconformity manner, which inspired Hutton's confirmation of his Theory of the Earth, to say that it is infinitely much older than we could ever imagine. It was revolutionary for his time, a time dominated by biblical assumptions of how old the Earth was rather than scientific. To think that a 200 year old realm of thought is but a speck in what we now know is 4.5 billion years of the planet we exist upon. I got a number of pictures of it all, as I was in awe of being at one of the most important outcrops in the world & history of geology. From that point, we made a few more brief hikes near the coast to "retrace" Hutton's step a little further, and our professors surprised the group with an ice cream trip of no charge to us. 

Finally, we arrived in Edinburgh, the last accommodation of our trip. We stayed in a historic townhouse (with very intriguing chandeliers!) and immediately were set free to begin our hunt for dinner. On Night 1, I had ramen and nigiri with my frequent accomplice, Sarah. We explored the city through and through, hitting The Royal Mile and Victoria Street, as well as some other beautiful pathways in between. We took so many photos that our phones drained to death, but we found our way back to the guest house quite efficiently without help. For the remaining days, we made a joke of this, as if we were locals and meant to be students in the city, for how well we'd known our paths around it so quickly. Our stay was predominantly in the old city portion, I believe, which I heard multiple remarks about being the most beautiful city in the world. I could not agree more. To be surrounded by such architecture was surely overwhelming for my phone, as I could've taken pictures of it forever. On our second (and last full exploration day), we climbed to the summit of Arthur's Peak, my second summit of the trip. Along the way, we made numerous geologic stops to discuss volcanic activity and which portions of the old volcano we were looking at. On this day, the rain finally met us, so my only field notes of the site were obscured and made into an inky mess in my field notebook. But what I do remember is: extrusive basalts dotting the lower topography, minimal phenocrysts and air bubbles at the start, then a progression into breccias, higher volatile content, increasing zeolites, and more vesicularity. The portions of vesicles (air bubbles) in the basalt were ever-changing, but definitely decreased when we got closer to the breccias in upper topographies. Along the sides of the mountains were basalt columns which only occur with slow lava cooling. The ruins of St. Anthony's Chapel made a good shelter for us early on, where we got a group picture and were shielded from the rain while observing a large volcanic vent. The valleys further along were remniscent of the highlands, at a smaller scale. All of the group reached the summit of this mountain and sat to snack and make friends with a magpie bird which hovered on a ledge near us. It was quite rewarding to prove to myself that, if I can summit Ben Nevis, this was something I could accomplish too, although this summit was much more crowded and the rocks were very much smoothed down & slippery. But again, I braved my fears and pushed on. After one more stop on the way down to see more rocks that Hutton observed, we made it back to the van rather early in the day and were set free to roam Edinburgh, since the geologic stops of the trip had been completed. 

Sarah and I spent the remainder of our last day in Edinburgh doing some last-minute shopping and visiting a cat cafe (which we managed to get in while it was full!). I fell in love with Oriental Shorthairs and had the best iced coffee I'd enjoyed in Scotland yet, even as iced drinks had been uncommon to come across the entire trip. I shopped a little more for those I love and got to see Edinburgh in its most crowded tourist hour. It made us truly grateful that every time we got back and were given time to explore in the days prior, everyone had already resigned from the city for the night and the pictures taken had little-to-no crowds in them. As we waited for dinner, we stopped in the National Library of Scotland (where I read The Paris Peacemakers for an hour or so), visited an incredible fossil and mineral shop (I bought a Lewisian Gneiss sample and Skye agate!), and toured roads we had not yet taken. I got my last desired pictures of the city, and then we met the group at The Blackbird for a delicious final dinner together. I had a Bang Bang chicken sandwich, probably the best food I'd had that trip, and a diet coke-- the only part of the meal I had to pay for. It surely won against the days of eating peanut butter jellies (more pb than jelly) and whatever was left in the van to reduce food waste, especially as just a few hours prior, Sarah and I had polished off as many bread slices with peanut butter as we individually could. Perhaps the most of my admiration goes to her braving drinking full jars of milk -- used jelly jars that she poured the rest of our existing milk into and drank throughout the day, stored politely in one of her cargo pants' pockets. The days of finishing our groceries are over, and all I can say is, I will not be eating peanut butter nor jelly, nor bananas, nor drinking milk by itself, for a couple days to recover. 

I started this entry in Glasgow, and after a day of van->airport->flight->airport->van->dad's truck from campus, I am home. I was exhausted and barely sentient in the last bits of our travel from Dulles to Juniata Campus, but now I sit in my living room at home and look back on this, happy to have these memories written down to share with whoever takes the time to skim them. I will now go enjoy a cup of good tea or coffee, maybe chew some ice, enjoy the little luxuries I've missed (including my slippers and jeans, because I sure am tired of leggings). 

Thanks for listening guys.

Sincerely,

MGW