
Bow Fiddle Rock is a
natural sea arch near
Portknockie
Portknockie (, the hilly port) is a coastal village on the Moray Firth within Moray, Scotland.
The village's name is written as Portknockies in the Old Parish Registers. This would suggest that the port's name referred to not one, but two rock ...
on the north-eastern coast of
Scotland
Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...
. It is so called because it resembles the tip of a
fiddle
A fiddle is a Bow (music), bowed String instrument, string musical instrument, most often a violin or a bass. It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres, including European classical music, classical music. Althou ...
bow BOW as an acronym may refer to:
* Bag of waters, amniotic sac
* Bartow Municipal Airport (IATA:BOW), a public use airport near Bartow, Florida, United States
* Basic operating weight of an aircraft
* BOW counties, made of Brown, Outagamie, and Winn ...
.
It is composed of
Quartzite
Quartzite is a hard, non- foliated metamorphic rock that was originally pure quartz sandstone.Essentials of Geology, 3rd Edition, Stephen Marshak, p 182 Sandstone is converted into quartzite through heating and pressure usually related to tecton ...
, a
metamorphic rock
Metamorphic rocks arise from the transformation of existing rock to new types of rock in a process called metamorphism. The original rock ( protolith) is subjected to temperatures greater than and, often, elevated pressure of or more, caus ...
which was originally
quartz
Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The Atom, atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen Tetrahedral molecular geometry, tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tet ...
sandstone
Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...
.
This rock is part of the Cullen Quartzite formation which is seen along the coast between
Buckie
Buckie () is a burgh town (defined as such in List of burghs in Scotland, 1888) on the Moray Firth coast of Scotland. Counties of Scotland, Historically in Banffshire, Buckie was the largest town in the county until the administrative area was ...
and
Cullen. The formation is some 2,400m thick and dates from the
Neoproterozoic Era
The Neoproterozoic Era is the last of the three geologic eras of the Proterozoic eon, spanning from 1 billion to 538.8 million years ago, and is the last era of the Precambrian "supereon". It is preceded by the Mesoproterozoic era and succeeded b ...
, 1,000 to 539 million years ago.
These rocks were folded when the ancient continents of Laurentia and Avalonia collided during the
Caledonian orogeny
The Caledonian orogeny was a mountain-building cycle recorded in the northern parts of the British Isles, the Scandinavian Caledonides, Svalbard, eastern Greenland and parts of north-central Europe. The Caledonian orogeny encompasses events tha ...
. They later became exposed at the surface where sea and weather eroded the structure seen today.
The rock formation is both a tourist attraction and nesting place for sea birds including
herring gulls Herring gull is a common name for several birds in the genus ''Larus
''Larus'' is a large genus of gulls with worldwide distribution (by far the greatest species diversity is in the Northern Hemisphere).
Many of its species are abundant and w ...
,
great black-backed gulls
The great black-backed gull (''Larus marinus'') is the largest member of the gull family. It is a very aggressive hunter, pirate, and scavenger which breeds on the coasts and islands of the North Atlantic in northern Europe and northeastern Nort ...
and
lesser black-backed gull
The lesser black-backed gull (''Larus fuscus'') is a large gull that breeds on the Atlantic coasts of Europe. It is migratory, wintering from the British Isles south to West Africa. However, it has increased dramatically in North America, especi ...
s.
See video footage by Charles Lovelace showing Cam Cameron from Buckie's swim through the Gap in the Rock in December 2021 in aid of UK Charities.
References
Natural arches of Scotland
Landforms of Moray
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