After the Ice

Towards the end of the last ice age, a glacier known as the Lochaber Ice Lobe had moved and effectively dammed the mouth of Glen Roy near Fort William. Unable to drain into Loch Linnhe and the sea, the River Roy formed a loch and its shoreline created a strange series of tracks on the flanks of the mountains known as the Parallel Roads. They were probably made by a combination of regular, uniform wave action and intense frost. When the weather became even colder, the glacier grew and pushed the waters of the loch further into the mountains. It rose higher to form the second parallel road. And as temperatures dropped even lower, the level of the loch rose once more and created the highest of the three parallel roads.

When the Earth at last began to warm, about eleven thousand years ago, the ice dam made by the glacier suddenly broke down. Almost certainly in a matter of hours and with a deafening roar, a raging torrent of very cold water raced towards the Great Glen, carrying everything before it. The first damburst probably drained to the north-east, to Loch Ness, Inverness and into the sea at the Moray Firth. The highest of the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy remembers a cataclysm, but also the moment when the ice age ended and life in the Highlands began.