We started our flight from the Nottingham/Tollerton Airport and headed North across the East Midlands and through the Peak District.

The Exciting East Midlands

Downtown Nottingham

The Parallel Roads of Glen Roy are of particular interest as their formation was surrounded by legend and mystery until science came around. It was initially thought these roads were formed by the giant Fingal. In the 19th century, naturalists began devising ways thing which these road could have formed. Sir Thomas Lauder-*** was the first to suggest that these roads were ancient lake shores but was unable to offer a probable explanation how the lake could have been retained with a water depth of over 1000 feet above sea level. He thought that perhaps a fault or massive slide had allowed for the water to rush out of the valley, but as Thomas Jamieson observed,

“Another mode of explanation,” Jamieson explained, “presented itself in supposing the sea to have been the agent. Sink the country to the level of the highest line, and we should have a sea-margin corresponding to it ; and then as the land gradually emerged, successive coast-lines might be traced corresponding to all those we find.” This was the theory strongly favored by Charles Darwin. Darwin’s support of uplifted shoreline terraces was understandable considering his experience on the Beagle around the southern Andean coastline where he observed an uplifted coastline of a tectonically active continental margin. At the time of Jamieson’s writings Darwin’s theory was the generally accepted view. However, in 1840 this was all challenged when Louis Agassiz came to Britain. Agassiz was a professor at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland. His work was primarily focused on glacial geomorphology. He came to Britain to search for glacial features in a land that no longer had any glaciers. As you can imagine, evidence for glaciation was everywhere. In the case of the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy, Jamieson recounts that, “Ice, in short, had been the barrier that no one could find, and which, on the approach of a more genial climate, had melted before the heat of the sun, and vanishing  left “not a wreck behind.” Agassiz’s theory has held up over the past 170 years. Recent cosmogenic nuclide exposure ages of the Parallel Road put their formation age at 11,500 to 11,900 years old, right at the end of the last ice age (Fabel et al., Journal of Quaternary Science, 2009). Seeing this sight from the air provides a whole new perspective!

From Glen Roy, we continued northward until we crossed the Great Glen fault at Loch Lochy. This linear feature is seen prominently on any map of Scotland as it forms a straight line that bisects the entire island. Glaciers have carved out the delicate fault gouge leaving behind a string of elongate lakes spanning from Inverness in the east through Loch Ness to Fort William in the west.

From the Great Glen we turned west and headed for the coast where we skirted over Loch Morar and headed south towards the Isle of Mull.

On the Ardnamurchan peninsula lies the beautiful Ardnamurchan central igneous complex. This complex formed during the Paleogene (~59 Ma) and is composed of a 8 by 6 km wide, deeply eroded volcanic edifice. Field mapping of the complex identified what was thought to be three volcanic centers. However recent 3D subsurface extrapolation has reveals a single elongate magma chamber 2 km beneath the surface (Burchardt et al., Nature 2014). This new result has important implications for how we understand magma chamber dynamics.