Raised marine terraces, Gruinard Bay, Wester Ross

 

This is a great picture of two raised marine terraces (we might call them raised beaches) in Gruinard Bay in northern Scotland.  This is on the eastern shore of The Minch,  in an area which we might expect post-Devensian isostatic recovery to be still going on.  The marine limit here is not much above 20m. There has been much greater isostatic uplift further south, between Fort William and the Firth of Clyde, where ice sheet crustal load was at its greatest.   The two terraces (above the current HWM) are formed mostly of outwash sands and gravels from the Little Gruinard River.  I am not aware of any detailed geomorphology studies in the literature.

Incidentally, it is postulated that the pink granite erratic at Saunton (on the N Devon coast)  might have come from this location  -- but having looked at the geology map I am rather sceptical about that.........