■ All specifications: Glaciation
The Scottish Highlands contain a remarkable variety of scenery. In the west are sharp-crested alpine summits separated by deep troughs, rock basins and fjords; in the east are broad, undulating plateaux; and along the western seaboard are expanses of rocky knolls separated by small lochs and peat bogs. To some extent, this variety reflects differences in the underlying rocks. These range from gneisses over 3 billion years old in the far northwest to lava flows that erupted 60–65 million years ago on the islands of Skye and Mull. Most of the Highlands, however, are underlain by folded metamorphic rocks, such as schist and quartzite, locally intruded by large granite plutons such as that underlying the Cairngorm Mountains.
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