A couple of weeks ago we had a few days on the Ardnamurchan peninsula.
We stayed in the Salen Hotel near Acharacle, in one of their chalets at the back, so Maisie could safely be in the room with us. (They're hard flooring so rufty tufty climbers with their muddy boots won't damage the furnishings.)
We had three days of the most glorious sunshine. How lucky are we? This picture is taken just as we were coming out of a three mile walk through woodlands and over the dunes to Kentra Bay. The sand here is beautiful and white, and it 'sings' when you walk on it. This is because the sand grains are all uniform size and well-rounded, so they roll over each other as your feet move them, producing a high pitched sort of squeak.
There were loads of different fungi in the woods, but best of all on the dunes (which are acid and covered in heather, so totally different from the more familiar calcareous dunes) were some little black crinkly fungi which we'd never seen before. They are apparently called 'earth tongues' or geoglossum. We tried to take pictures, but without much success as Maisie kept sticking her nose in to see what we were taking an interest in! It's a pity we didn't try harder, because we subsequently found out they're quite rare in the UK.
Anyway, we had a fabulous few days, with good food and friendly service in the hotel, lovely walks and some astonishing geology to marvel at. Particularly jaw-dropping was standing at the centre of the huge ring dyke which you can see in its entirety in this arial picture (copied from the internet). I apologise for the lack of photos taken by us, but it was so sunny that the air was quite hazy, so not good for photography. By the way, if you're interested in geology, the latest theory about this formation is not that it's a ring dyke, but that it is what's left of an enormous magma chamber at the centre of a huge volcano. The Great Eucrite intrusion has been re-interpreted as the remains of a lopolith. Don't you just love those words?
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