The fierce beauty of the hills and coastline of Ardnamurchan is the creation of two major geological events.

Some 50 million years ago, at the time that the Atlantic Ocean was beginning to open, the western side of what was to become Great Britain was dominated by a line of mighty volcanoes comparable to Hawaii today.

Skye, Ardnamurchan, Mull and Arran are the sites of the biggest, the one on Ardnamurchan passing through three phases in which the volcanic centre moved, each time creating great ring dykes whose circular outcrop form the rugged hills at the western end of the peninsula, lava flows, and innumerable cone sheets and dykes which are easily found among the rocks exposed along the coastline

Then, in the recent Pleistocene ice age, immense glaciers stripped the volcanic cones away, eating down to expose the core of their structure. When you traverse Ardnamurchan today you are journeying through the very guts of these volcanoes.

But this is not all. The rocks through which the volcanoes erupted are still visible. Ancient Jurassic sediments crawl with the fossil remains of belemnites and ammonites. Towards the eastern end of the peninsula the rocks of a billion year old mountain chain, worn down to its roots, yield mica schists containing glowing red garnets. And there is so much more....

Jon Haylett, proprietor of "Ferry Stores", Kilchoan

There is an active geological group based in Kilchoan. Information on the geology of Ardnamurchan is available at the Community Centre in Kilchoan.