Geology
Here is a collection of educational resources for understanding the geology of the National Park better.
Balmaha Geological Trail
The following video explains the story behind the formation of Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park, the processes which shaped it and formed the features that created the landscape we see today. It also introduces the variety of land uses in the National Park.
Download the Balmaha Geological Trail
Chocolate Geology
Rocks are made of one or sometimes more different minerals – there are over 3,500 of them. Making a rock is like making a cake – what do you need? Ingredients, tools – mixing bowl, spoon, heat to make it. How we mix the cake ingredients together and the temperature we bake it at in the oven is important. This is the same for making a rock – the earth is the oven heating up the minerals – how we mix them together and the temperature determines what time of rock we get.
Chocolate is a great medium to understand this, for example a Crème Egg will show you how the earth is made up i.e. chocolate is the crust, white crème is the mantle, yellow crème is the core.
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| A ranger demonstrating the ‘chocolate geology’ principles |
Download our Chocolate Geology outdoor learning resource
Callander Geodiversity Trail
The place we now call Callander has been shaped by extraordinary forces over millennia. It may be hard to believe nowadays, but where we now stand was once a desert-like region south of the Equator, before continental drift brought the landforms together to create Scotland. A series of Ice Ages have left their mark, from the slow advance of the ice sheets, thousands of metres thick, to the grinding of the glaciers which carved out the glens. The streams and rivers which ran within the ice have left their traces as eskers, most notably near the Roman Camp Hotel, and the last remnant of the retreating glaciers, the Callander Moraine, remains at the east end of the town to tell its story.
All of these events have left evidence for us to investigate, and the booklet below will show you where some of that evidence is to be found.
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| Samson’s boulder, Bochastle, Callander |
Callander Stories in Landscape Geodiversity Trail