There is a good restaurant specializing in smoked fish at Auchmithie, for when you've finished the walk.

Scottish geology is exceptionally complicated and historically important. Mull is maybe the most heterogeneous spot, with a vast ancient volcano, a great big fossil tree, unusual red granite and the columnar basalt of Staffa. There's a good ten-miles-to-the-inch geological map of the whole country.

Hugh Macdiarmid once suggested that Scotland's separate geology was an argument for independence. Not one of his more persuasive ideas. One bit of Scotland really belongs to Venezuela - it left home about 100 million years ago and is now underneath the whisky-producing peat bogs of Islay. So perhaps the Islay locals ought to be learning Spanish.