Caldera - A Viewpoint

The United States designated a national park around its crater lake in the Oregon rockies, and attracts around three-quarters of a million visitors each year. It formed only 7,700 years ago - witnessed by Native American people who were there to see it

Mull's Crater Loch formed 60 million years ago as a result of a huge outpouring of basalt lava and subsequent collapse of the volcano's summit. Witnessed, perhaps, by some early mammals. Based on our experience that the guide book directs you to a start point that does not exist (with the result that we hacked over some fairly rough country, pushing aside tangled bracken and springy low branches), we suspect that the number of visitors who make the short, but fairly stiff climb to its rim falls short of 750k. It's also some of the wettest land that we have crossed, despite being some of the steepest; proof positive that water does not always flow downhill

The reward for those who find the path, ignore their wet socks and push up their pulse a little is a remarkably spectacular 360 degree views across the island itself and many others nearby, lochs both salt and sweet and, on the horizon, like a mirage, the Outer Hebrides. The crater loch itself is suitably dark, still and pensive, even it's a little ruffled by the approaching rains. We have become so accustomed to the warm colours of the hills that it is only in a photograph that I really see them afresh

I took a version of this with the lens cleaned to remove the raindrops, but I think this one better represents the saturated nature of the day

I think the island is seeping into us. The voices from Westminster - fools trying to pull themselves clear of a quagmire (worse than any we crossed today) that they spent a generation creating - seem so distant and puny. A casual conversation in a cafe threw up the term 'off-island' for what we would have called a trip to the mainland. Mainland is a point of view