Staffa

The tiny island of Staffa (6mi/9.6km northeast of Iona) now belongs to the National Trust for Scotland. It can only be reached from Mull or Iona when the weather is fine. This uninhabited island is famed for its unusual black basalt rock formations which were formed by a huge volcanic eruption during the Tertiary Era about 70 million years ago. Theodor Fontane a German writer who visited the island in 1860 described Staffa thus: "When the god Vulcan's work was done and he had brought the tens and hundreds of thousands of basalt columns into the world, Staffa stood there like a tightly-bound bundle of stone pine trees, but the ocean, that has reigned with absolute power and washed these parts from the beginning of time, was angered by the new arrival from the underworld and began to exercise its superior might. Whole pieces and halves were torn down and washed away, and so emerged, depending on the extent and nature of the destruction, the embankments and cave formations which are peculiar to this island".