The Highland Boundary Fault - BlairvadachBytes |Discovery Geology

Hi folks, Andy S here from Blairvadic. I'm currently stood at the David Marshall Lodge just above Aberfoyle, which is just down the hill down there. Behind me here is a hill called Lime Craig. Not a particularly big hill, but it's quite significant in geological reasons. The reason why that is, is Lime Craig and all the way across Scotland from here over that direction and behind me here is part of what's called the Highland Boundary Fault. The Highland Boundary Fault happened around about 400 million years ago. On this little map here, you can see a little map of Scotland. Right over here on the east coast is Stonehaven and the Highland Boundary Fault runs all the way across Scotland, right the way across to the west coast and out towards the Isle of Arran, which is in that direction over there. From here, we're going to take a short walk up to the top of Lime Craig. It's not a particularly long walk, but the views from the top are spectacular, just over about 1,000 feet high there. We're going to get to the top of Lime Craig and from there, you can see right across where the Boundary Fault goes. On a day like today, it's going to be pretty amazing. On our way up Lime Craig, we pass this, which is called the Little Thorn Falls. Legend has it that hundreds of years ago, hunters were chasing some deer across the top of the waterfall and a little thorn fell all the way to the bottom. Apparently, there's a cave underneath it and the fairies that lived in the cave caught the little thorn and let it go and live on for another day. You can still see roe deer in the forest here amongst all these oak trees. If we're lucky, we might see one on the way up the hill. So what is a fault line? A fault line is basically two huge plates underneath the earth's crust which bang into each other. They can sometimes slide against each other, but when they bang against each other, they create mountain ranges. This is what's happened with the Highland Boundary Fault. So I'm currently sitting inside the wildlife hide, which is where I'm keeping my voice down. Out there, if we're lucky enough, we might see a squirrel. The Highland Boundary Fault was created around about 400 million years ago and when this happened, the mountains that were created from it initially were over 30,000 feet in height. That's much higher than Mount Everest. From here on the top of Lime Craig, looking all the way across to the southern end of Loch Lomond, the rock type that you can find along the Boundary Fault line is known as conglomerate or pudding stone. It looks a little bit like big plums in a pudding and you can see this rock type all the way across. And if people remember climbing Connick Hill when they were here at Blair Baddock, you'll recognize it as the rock that we used to stand on top of when you got to the top of Connick Hill. So that's it folks, that is the Highland Boundary Fault. If you've enjoyed this video, check out some other ones that are coming soon on the Blair Baddock Bites Twitter feed. Check out the links on the worksheet and hope you guys are all well back in Glasgow. Thanks for listening.