The view looking east from the top of the Devil’s staircase is a vast panorama of mountains and valley.   I did say that from this point is might be possible to gather a better picture of the caldera and maybe, if you have a working knowledge of geology, it is possible to pick out the tell-tale features of a collapsed volcanic ring. However I can only take my hat off to the Victorian pioneers who came to this conclusion, when it would have been a lot easier to explain the whole process at some other site that hadn’t experienced further volcanic activity and then had glaciers crashing through the entire landscape, thereby obscuring the original structures.   Although this is the point where the original fracture occurred that caused the volcano, this is no longer the centre of the caldera, we are in fact on the northern edge. Looking east, the glacier crashed through the walls, flattening the caldera.  It rises up above the Glencoe mountain resort and then heads to Stob Dubh to the sou

The geology of Glencoe is so complex and varied that I almost dare not speak of it. It is famous for being the first recognised caldera volcano and my first thought on looking around was how? It is not obvious to the lay person that this landscape is a collapsed cauldron and the geological events that have occurred since, such as the movement of the land from the southern hemisphere to the north and the numerous collisions with continents that happened along the way, have deformed the circle and made it a mangled ellipse. The subsequent ice ages have sliced a deep valley through the caldera walls, further obscuring the landscape. The Glencoe mountain resort on the very eastern edge of the caldera, is maybe not the best place to appreciate the geology. On today’s route the West Highland Way heads down the glen, following the scrape of the glacier on its slide to the sea, until the route turns to climb the Devil’s Staircase. However the top of the Devil’s Staircase lies under the peak of

The Gaelic poet Duncan Ban Macintyre was born and raised on the southern side of Loch Tulla in  Druim Liaghart .    When he was young he courted the daughter of the Landlord of the Inveroran Hotel,  Màiri bhàn òg.  In his poems he observed the busy lives of the villagers; farming, hunting, fishing and weaving; the social life of the village, of fairs, music and song. His works captured the essence of  a living vibrant community. Coming down to Inveroran Inn On a bright sunny day such as today it would be easy to image that this place could be busy with people going about their business, more difficult to understand how they would cope in the depths of winter. But people did subsist, although admittedly the living was difficult. The Highlands was thronged with crofters. For the land owners there were better ways to make money than rely on the meagre rents of their tenants and (especially after the '45 Jacobite rebellion) ridding the land of the quarrelsome Jacobites and farming shee