Fabulous old rocks

The Multi-coloured Rock Stop.
Laxford Bridge

These rocks are old.
Not just old, but really, really old.
In fact, you just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly old they are.
They were some of the very first rocks to solidify from the molten Earth 3 billion years ago.
We are spending the week studying them up in the NorthWest Highlands. It is a welcome escape from the silly temperatures in the south.
This magnificent road cutting shows pale grey Lewisian gneisses, shot through with pink granites and black basaltic magmas and then squeezed and distorted under massive pressures at depth as mountains were pushed up overhead. Over the millennia the mountains were worn away and these rocks were then exposed at the surface by the glaciers of the last ice age, and finally cut by the road gangs when the A838 was widened.

Extra: sunset over Loch Assynt