Lochaber

We've just returned from a long weekend spent in Lochaber, one of my favourite parts of Scotland. It's a land of high mountains - Ben Nevis is in Lochaber - steep hillsides, rushing burns, wooded glens and silent lochs. It's also an area which has its own weather: while much of Britain sweated under Mediterranean temperatures, I found myself so chilled during our walk on Saturday that I had to borrow a ladies' puffer jacket to survive.

If I love Lochaber, the Roy river glen is particularly special. We spent Saturday morning walking up a section of it, meeting only two people. There were far more....

....red deer than humans. This stag is 'in velvet' - growing new antlers....

 ....although most of the deer wisely chose to stay high up on the ridges on either side of the glen.

Empty of humans the Roy glen may be, yet it has an international reputation. I had heard of the Roy long before I felt any great attachment to Scotland as it features in many physical geography and geology text books for....

....its 'parallel roads', lines running along the sides of the glen, seen in this picture along the hill face to the left. These are fossil beaches, left by a loch formed when the glen was dammed and then flooded during one of the last glacial periods.

So when I was a geology undergraduate I learned about the parallel roads from this tome, 'Principles of Physical Geology' by the great Arthur Holmes. It was such a special book that I asked my parents if they would purchase me a copy, which they did.  Sadly, at some point in one of our many moves, I was separated from it.