Crossing continents: a trip to Langholm

These are views from the Malcolm monument on Whita Hill above Langholm in southern Scotland. You can see our house in the views - well, I could pick out Wigton's factory through the binoculars. You can make out Skiddaw in the bottom photograph. And you can see Whita Hill and its monument from my garden. I was amazed to discover some years ago that Wigton and Langholm were on separate continents until 450 million years ago. Between us was an ocean called the Iapetus Ocean. It's roughly where the Atlantic Ocean later opened, so it was named after Iapetus who was the father of Atlas (Atlantic...) in Greek mythology. The hills on either side of the Solway weren't there when there were two continents. In fact, the hills were still mud on the edge of each continental shelf. They formed mudstones which were pushed up and metamorphosed into slates and the amazingly named greywackes due to the pressure of the collision. So Skiddaw used to be mud on the bottom of the ocean. As did these hills in the Southern Uplands taken from Bailiehill hill fort near Eskdalemuir. You can see the crumpling of the landscape caused by the collision.

It's the nearest I'm likely to get to crossing continents!