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WONDERS OF NATURE
Glen More Valley. Nature miracle
The largest island in Europe - Great Britain in the northern part crosses obliquely a huge tectonic fault, like a scar from the impact of a giant ax that cut the Scottish Highlands in half. On the map, the fault looks like a perfectly straight green-blue strip that cut through the highlands of Scotland from the northeast to the southwest - from the Moray Firth to the Firth of Lorne. This valley is called Glen More. And she herself, and the shores of long narrow lakes, stretching along the valley in a chain, seem to be drawn along a ruler. This straight line is continued by the northern shores of both bays, so that the total length of the mysterious scar reaches two hundred kilometers.
Geologists believe that the fault that cut through the valley was not simple. Along it there was also a shift of almost 100 kilometers, and the granite massifs lying on the northwestern coast of the Firth of Lorne find their continuation near Inverness, on the south coast of the Moray Firth. Faults and shifts, faults and thrusts shook this territory 200 million years ago, when the huge continent of Laurasia broke up into today's Eurasia and North America. At this time, large islands broke away and parted in different directions: Greenland, Newfoundland, Great Britain, Ireland and Svalbard. If we try to cut out from the map and put together parts of the former Laurasia, we will see, by the way, the continuation of Glen More in the form of the same tectonic valley in Newfoundland. A picturesque lake chain of lakes Loch Ness, Loch Oich, Loch Lochy and, in fact, became the sea bay of Loch Linne, is strung on the fault-shift line. From the southeast, the green slopes of the Grampian Mountains, the highest in Scotland, rise above them. Here, at the southern end of Glen More, is the highest peak in all of Great Britain - Mount Ben Nevis. Of course, the Grampian Mountains are far from the Alps and the Himalayas, and the height of the "Scottish Everest" is only 1343 meters, but still for the British and Scots, Ben Nevis is a source of pride, although climbing it does not require either ice axes or rocky hooks: along the mossy winding on the path, anyone can climb this mountain even in sneakers. And the northern highlands of Scotland serve as the northwestern border of the tectonic valley, and to this day are deaf and sparsely populated. Rare villages here huddle close to the sea coast, and the central part of the uplands is occupied by a gloomy spruce forest and mountain meadows and moorlands. A semi-abandoned railway line runs along the banks of the Moray Firth north to Wick, the only town in this deserted region. A fish farm at Wick, and two small hydroelectric power plants on turbulent rivers rushing from rocky cliffs to Glen Sea - that's the whole industry of this "land of fogs and winds." The inhabitants of the Glen More Valley and its environs have long been fed by the sea. But swimming in the local waters has always been difficult. To get from Inverness to Fort William, on the west coast, the ships had to go around the northern tip of the UK, making a journey of almost 800 kilometers. Storms and fogs, as well as winding straits abounding with treacherous rocks near the Orkney and Hebrides Islands, were waiting for the captains on this route. And not one hundred fishing boats and schooners crashed here on sharp stones. In search of a convenient waterway linking the two coasts, people have long been eyeing the Glen More valley. And in the middle of the XNUMXth century, during the reign of Queen Victoria, the deep lakes of this valley were connected by a series of canals, thus paving a direct route for ships from the Moray Firth to the Firth of Lorne. The northernmost canal in Europe accessible to ships was called the Caledonian, after the ancient name of Scotland. Now fishing schooners and coal-carriers bound for Norway could cross Scotland in the middle, gaining 700 kilometers and leaving aside storms, fogs and rocks in the dangerous straits between the Inner and Outer Hebrides and the Pentland Firth between Great Britain and the Orkney archipelago. The deepest and most famous lake on the Caledonian Canal is the famous Loch Ness. Narrow, stretched for 50 kilometers, the reservoir reaches a depth of 230 meters. The water of Loch Ness is dark brown, almost opaque due to peat particles, and the rocky shores are cut under the water by deep caves, which have not yet been explored by either instruments or scuba divers. It is no coincidence that it was here that folk rumor settled a mysterious aquatic animal, similar to the ancient plesiosaur lizard. According to medieval chronicles, monks saw the monster near Urquhart Castle as early as the 1200th century. Then it allegedly appeared from time to time either in the middle of the lake or on the shore. But in XNUMX years there have been no more than a hundred such testimonies, and one could consider them a figment of the imagination of superstitious Scots. However, since 1933, when a modern highway began to be laid along the lake and numerous explosions disturbed the peace of the coastal rocks and waters of Loch Ness, the number of people who saw Nessie (as journalists familiarly dubbed the lizard) increased dramatically. And the first to report an unexpected meeting was not some dark, illiterate shepherd or fisherman, but the road engineer Palmer. Here is an excerpt from his story: Before the skeptics had time to ridicule the overly impressionable engineer, who apparently mistook a log or a bunch of seaweed for a water kite, events began to unfold with kaleidoscopic speed. Over the next two months, several hundred eyewitnesses, alone and in groups, observed a strange creature in Loch Ness! Statisticians recorded 118 cases of Nessie appearing off the coast and in the middle of the lake. I even managed to photograph the neck and head of the monster sticking out of the water. Since then, the sensational hype around Nessie has not subsided. Thousands of curious people travel every year to the shores of Loch Ness in the hope of seeing the last prehistoric pangolin on Earth. Fanatics have already appeared, devoting all their leisure time to observing the lake and investigating it for years with a variety of methods. Locators, sonars, and even a miniature submarine were used to locate Nessie. Special microphones were installed in the depths of the lake, but so far no conclusive material evidence of the existence of a plesiosaur in Loch Ness has been received. However, fanatics think otherwise. Here is what, for example, the well-known "lochness expert", the Englishman Searle, writes: Specialists in animals unknown to science - cryptozoologists, such as the American Ivan Sanderson and the Belgian Bernard Euvelmans, devoted many pages in their scientific works to the mysterious inhabitant of Loch Ness. And the practical Scots have launched a real souvenir industry in Inverness and other towns near the lake, using the tourist boom for purely commercial purposes. Figurines, key chains, pictures, booklets, postcards and photographs bring significant income to residents. However, key rings and not too clear photographs are a weak argument for serious researchers, but there is still no real evidence of an ancient lizard living in the waters of Loch Ness." Only the gloomy towers of the Urquhart castle towering on a steep hill, which have seen a lot over the past centuries, could tell the truth about Nessie. But the gloomy stones are silent, and the mystery of the lake in the Glen More valley still remains unsolved. Author: B.Wagner
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