Great Glen
— — a valley the country splits open along.
Not only on a wall.
“A geological wound running 100 kilometres diagonal across the Highlands, opened by a strike-slip fault that moved before the dinosaurs. Three lochs hold the water: Ness, Oich, Lochy. Thomas Telford's Caledonian Canal links them, sea to sea. Heather on the braes, larch and birch on the lower slopes, and on a clear morning the long axis of the glen pulls the eye all the way through. The water is dark because the hills give it peat, not depth. from the studio
Great Glen, 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.
The Great Glen (Gaelic: Gleann Mòr) is a straight fault valley running about 100 kilometres from Inverness on the Moray Firth to Fort William on Loch Linnhe. It follows the Great Glen Fault, a strike-slip fault active since the Caledonian orogeny roughly 400 million years ago. Three freshwater lochs occupy the trough: Loch Ness (the deepest, holding more water than every lake in England and Wales combined), Loch Oich (the summit), and Loch Lochy. Ben Nevis, the highest peak in the British Isles at 1,345 metres, rises just south of the glen's western end.
Loch Ness alone holds about 7.5 cubic kilometres of fresh water — more than the combined volume of every lake in England and Wales. The water reads peaty-dark because of the tannins it carries off the surrounding hills, not because of its 230-metre depth. The Caledonian Canal, engineered by Thomas Telford and opened in 1822, stitches the three lochs into a single navigable run from Inverness to Corpach near Fort William, with 29 locks lifting boats over the watersheds. Neptune's Staircase at Banavie is the longest staircase lock in Britain.
The Great Glen Way long-distance footpath runs 117 kilometres along the glen's full length and takes most walkers five to six days. Inverness is reached by sleeper train from London Euston (about eleven hours) or by air via Inverness Airport. Urquhart Castle ruins on Loch Ness sit at the most-photographed bend. May and September give the best balance of long light and few midges. The midges arrive in earnest by mid-June; head nets are sold at every petrol station.