Bass Rock
— — the rock the gannets turned white.
Not only on a wall.
“A volcanic plug rising 107 metres out of the Firth of Forth, an hour east of Edinburgh. In spring the rock turns white from a distance: that is the gannets, the largest northern gannet colony in the world, roughly 150,000 birds at summer peak. The Scottish Seabird Centre at North Berwick runs the landing boats. From the harbour you can watch the cliffs change colour as the light moves.
Bass Rock, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Bass Rock is a steep-sided volcanic plug in the outer Firth of Forth, about 1.6 kilometres off the coast of North Berwick in East Lothian, Scotland. It rises 107 metres above sea level and is the eroded core of a Carboniferous volcano roughly 320 million years old. The rock holds the ruins of a 15th-century castle later used as a prison for Covenanters, a small chapel dedicated to the 8th-century St Baldred, and a lighthouse built in 1902 by David Stevenson, now automated.
From late January to October the rock holds roughly 150,000 northern gannets, the largest colony of Morus bassanus anywhere in the world. The species takes its scientific name from this rock. By June the cliffs are white with birds and the air around the boat smells of fish and salt. Above, gannets fold their wings and drop from thirty metres into the water at over 100 kilometres an hour. The colony was first counted in 1808; numbers have grown roughly tenfold since.
Landing trips run from North Berwick harbour from April to September, weather permitting; the three-hour landing requires reasonable mobility on uneven volcanic rock. Shorter catamaran cruises circle the rock without landing and run more reliably. The Scottish Seabird Centre on the harbourfront keeps live cameras on the colony through the year. North Berwick is about forty minutes by ScotRail from Edinburgh Waverley. The lighthouse has been automated since 1988 and is not open to the public.