Sunday 10 June 2012

Gneiss Rocks...


This rock is amazing. No, really - properly amazing stuff. For a start, when you see it on the beach it looks like massive humbugs, all stripey. Secondly, some of it is pink. Or pink and grey and white and  black stripes. If someone bought you a scarf in these colours and patterns you'd be itching for the cold weather to come so you could wear it. The other thing though - and if I'm honest this is the really amazing bit - is that this stuff is truly ancient, we're talking around three BILLION years old - THAT sort of ancient. It's Lewisian Gneiss, and in the Hebrides, you take it a bit for granted - it's everywhere, in fact, it's the bedrock that the Islands are built on. The Standing Stones at Calanais are built of it, and those are older than stonehenge. There's some technical stuff about it on Wikipaedia if you want to know a bit more. For now though, I just felt it deserved a bit of "bigging up" on here.

Robyn

ps - it's pronounced "nice"....see what I did with the title?!