Journey 1
Thomas Pennant
Skye
Why did Pennant focus on Skye?
Pennant wrote more about Skye than anywhere else on his journey. The reason was a discovery he made, one that helped early geologists piece together how Great Britain was formed.
The challenge for Nick Crane is that the name Pennant ascribes to his discovery,
Briis-mhawl, no longer relates to anywhere in Skye’s Cuillin mountain range.
By carefully unpicking Pennant’s route south from Talisker, Nick’s able to relocate Pennant’s spot. It’s the giant basalt columns of Preshal Beg.
60 million years old, these giant and symmetrical columns formed when Scotland split from Newfoundland and the Atlantic Ocean was created.
Pennant called them “the ruins of creation”. It was through discoveries such as this that geologists of his day began to think the previously-unthinkable. The rocks and landscape of Britain had been formed over millions of years. They were the result of huge movements of rocks and water. And they were nothing like the ready-made planet described in the Bible…