Achnaha, Highland
★★
Look closely and you should notice a change to the landscape as you travel north from Kilchoan towards the beautiful beaches dotted around Sanna Bay. The rocky, uneven topography that characterises the rest of the Ardnamurchan peninsula is suddenly replaced by a suspiciously flat and fertile plain ahead, surrounded by a ring of distant hills. Why? It’s because you’ve just driven through a gap in the cone of a colossal, extinct volcano. The magma upwelling which shaped this crater 60 million years ago also formed the dramatic Cuillin Hills on Skye and Rùm, but here it’s the crater rather than the mountains which is the most obvious indicator of past volcanic activity. The hamlet of Achnaha sits roughly at the centre, but the crater is actually better seen from above (or from your armchair using online aerial photography). Either way, it’s an interesting element of the journey to Sanna that many beachgoers are unaware of.
Location
O.S. Grid Reference: NM 463683
GPS coordinates: 56.737139,-6.150187
No public transport within 1 mi
Space to park at various points on the road through the crater – don’t block passing places
Key info
Always viewable
Free
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