The land Shaped by nature and man Schists on the shore south of Dunoon. Image credit: British Geological Survey. Ref: P215277Dunoon’s forests lie on the Cowal Peninsula in Argyll and Bute, a land of ragged coastline and rugged hills, scattered with islands, cut by deep sea-lochs. At first sight the Peninsula seems a world shaped by our recent ancestors, with forests planted for timber striding across the ridge and houses built a hundred years ago crowding along the seashore. But peel back the layers, and you will uncover millions of years of geology, shaped by forces deep within the earth and by the ravages of weather. Peer through the trees and you will also find that man’s influence goes back further than you think: before the forestry and the tourist trade, this was a land of crofters and fishermen, as old field boundary walls and tracks can testify. The rock beneath our feet The Highland Boundary Fault running south west as it passes through Loch Lomond. Image credit: British Geological Survey, ref P001225Cowal was shaped by great geological forces, like the movement of ice sheets and the grinding collision of the Highland Boundary Fault. The Fault divides the mass of Highland mountains from Scotland’s central lowlands, and cuts across the corner of Dunoon’s forests – you can still see where the rocks change colour along the seashore as you enter this new geological zone. Read more about the landscape and how it was formed. A gentler hand Corlarach – as in Corlarach Hill, one of the highest points in Dunoon’s forests – means ‘pasture’. That tells us what came before the forest: from as early as Neolithic times, hunter-gatherers settled to farm the Cowal Peninsula. Over thousands of years, people cleared the native woodland to make way for their animals and crops. Tiny clachans – hamlets – sprung up and people worked side by side, sharing out the fertile land in strips and grazing animals on the poorer land. More on how land use has left its mark. Image of houses at Inellan West circa 1910 - note bare ridge aboveTimber! Then came the time of the trees, again. Around 1948, the Forestry Commission began to plant Norway Spruce at Glenfyne, beginning to replace the many miles of forests cleared for the war effort. A postcard from about 1910 (left, top) shows the ridge above Innellan bare of trees, but the same view today (left, bottom) shows the ridge blanketed in Sitka spruce grown by Forestry Commission Scotland for commercial use. Houses at Inellan West, 2009. The ridge above the houses is now forested with Sitka Spruce grown for commercial purposes. Today’s forest is managed not only for timber, but also for wildlife and people to enjoy.
Posted on: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 11:12:31 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015