IT'S a perfectly clear and bright late-autumn day in Assynt, in the north-west Highlands. A local geologist, Jan Breckenridge, and I have followed the Assynt coastal road south to the small fishing port of Lochinver, where the landscape in the foreground is golden brown, rising smoothly out of a crust before dipping gently down again.
It's a pie. Awild boar and apricot one served up in the Lochinver Larder. After a morning viewing the geological features of Scotland's recently launched Unesco geopark, we've opted to view some gastronomical ones. Geopark status was awarded to the 2000 square kilometres of land from Coigach in Wester Ross to Cape Wrath and Loch Eriboll in the north for its outstanding geological importance.
However, being a geopark is not only about giving recognition to the geology of the area.
This is where the pie comes in.
The Lochinver pie is made within the boundaries of the park and, as such, could be re-branded as a geopark pie. Branding is already used in the Bergstrasse-Odenwald Geopark in Germany, which sells geoparkwines and champagne, plus a range of geopark hiking maps. "The geopark itself, although very strongly based on geology, also includes cultural and economic aspects, " says Breckenridge, who works with Scottish Natural Heritage. "It's not just about preservation, but a mechanism for sustainable development underpinned by geology."
The local people she has spoken to have renewed enthusiasm for the geology of the area and consultations are underway to see how geopark status can benefit communities. Indeed, once we get back on the road, we pass a man who moved to the area after he retired from producing Coronation Street. He's now an amateur geologist, with a bag for collecting samples, and regularly taps Breckenridge for information and advice. Others stop to tell her they've begun to read information boards along the "Rock Route" that stretches from Ullapool in the south to Rhinconich in the north and hadn't realised how important the area is.
Its importance, geologically speaking, cannot be overstated - neither can it be oversimplified for those without a geological background. Accordingly, the turfroofed, open-air visitor centre at Knockan Crag, 13miles north of Ullapool, offers a diversity of "interpretations", as they're known.
There's a comic-book strip, touchscreen computer, newspapermockup and engraved stones with keywords (one that nestles amusingly beside dramatic adjectives to describe rockmovement, is "stooshie"), all designed to enable people to learn, by way of enjoyable repetition, why the land they're standing on has helped to explain fundamental processes of the Earth.
Knockan Crag is, essentially, the best place to see the Moine thrust, which is a low-angle fault that stretches from Loch Eriboll to Skye. The Moine rocks are metamorphic (formed from pre-existing rocks through high pressure or temperature) and in the 1800s it was thought that layers of rock were always stacked from the oldest on the bottom to the youngest on top.
"It was in the late 1800s that Charles Lapworth said that the Moine schist couldn't be the youngest rock because it's metamorphic and there's no process that would metamorphose that rock but not the rock underneath it, " says Breckenridge. "So he proposed they'd been moved sideways. The scientific community went 'argh!' (hence the "stooshie"), much the same as it did after Darwin. RoderickMurchiston of the British Geological Survey (BGS) sent two of his best geologists - Ben Peach and John Horne - to the area to map it, and they spent several years doing so, mostly from the back of a donkey.
"They came back and said Lapworth was right. That caused lots of debate, but it was eventually accepted because you can't have a metamorphic rock on top of unmetamorphosed rocks. The process would affect all other rocks.
It changed the thinking in geology dramatically. There was a big conference here in 1912 where geologists came from all over the world to discuss the findings."
The process identified by Peach and Horne was then applied to the understanding of mountain ranges across the world - except volcanic ones - and the map produced by Peach and Horne (and donkey) is essentially the map used today.
Whatever your depth of understanding of the landscape, even knowing a little of its geology changes your perspective. The area is stunning, from the contrast of the recently-stabilised ruin of Ardvreck Castle against pristine Loch Assynt to the multiple personas of Quinag - from one side a forebodingly dark curved column, from another an inviting Corbett with a nobbletopped ridge.
Think like a geologist, however, and it changes. When we park near Kylestrome to look down Loch Glencoul, the Moine thrust can clearly be seen. "It comes up on that slope, then it goes away from us, " says Breckenridge.
After a brief tutorial in Lewisian gneiss (3000 million years old) and Torridonian sandstone (1000 million years old), Breckenridge points out an example. "The Lewisian rocks are like a fossilised landscape, " she says. "You can still see the hillocks and hollows that the Torridonian sandstone has then filled-in."
EVEN WHEN JUST DRIVING PAST crofting communities Breckenridge has a geological explanation at hand. "You can really see how the geology has affected the culture, " she says. "Looking out there, it's very acidic ground. The rock is pretty much just quartz, so it doesn't produce good soil. But there are pockets of limestone on the west coast and they produce very good soils, so you tend to find communities in those areas because it's good grazing."
Apart from this rare unity of appearance and explanation - replicated on information boards throughout the Rock Route - being at the geopark also warps your sense of time. Everything is understood in terms of thousands of millions of years and, if you spend long enough in the area, Durness limestone begins to take on a youthful charm (at just 480 million years old). This ends when we arrive in Inverloch, of course.
The pies are freshly-baked.
To book your break in Scotland or research visitor attractions, visit www. visitscotland. com or call the national information and booking line on 0845 2255121.
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