Minerals of Scotland

ISLE of SKYE
Mineral Collecting Localities

Mineral Collecting Localities

of the

Tertiary Basalt Lavas.

TALISKER BAY

TALISKER BAY, Isle of Skye.

Talisker Bay is one of the most long-standing and best-known collecting sites on the Isle of Skye.
Due in part to being one of the more accessible of the Tertiary basalt lava sites on the island and, more importantly perhaps, because collecting is normally met with success and can be rewarding to collectors of all tastes.

The most prevalent minerals to be found at Talisker Bay include analcime, mesolite, calcite and thomsonite.
(see below for amore complete list).

Small, white analcime crystals resting on brown, intergrown, rhombic calcite crystals in cavities
is also a typical association for the locality. Better quality specimens generally occur to the south of the bay,
where access is rather more problematic, but good specimens may be encountered, more or less, anywhere.

Talisker Bay is also one of the better known Heddle mineral localities (see below),
due mainly to the bay's sea stack bearing his name.

A fine specimen from Talisker Bay.

Access -
Is made from the main road at Drynoch. West from there,
via road and track, and then onto Talisker Bay.

Location -
Ordnance Survey Map Ref: approximately NG 315 301.

Sketch map of Talisker Bay.

Approach to Talisker Bay.

Talisker Burn.
(photo coutesy of Fabrizio Frattini).

View of Talisker Bay, looking north.

View of the waterfall.

Sea stack at Talisker Bay.

Minerals of Talisker Bay

A list of recorded species for the locality includes

Carbonates

Calcite.

Silicates

Gyrolite, Opal, Pectolite.

Silicates (zeolites)

Analcime, Chabazite, Epistilbite, Levyne, Mesolite, Natrolite, Laumontite, Thomsonite, Stilbite.

left - A large boulder, rich in small vesicles, cracked open to reveal a much larger, zeolite-filled cavity.

Matthew Forster Heddle

Regarded as the father of Scottish mineralogy, the stack at Talisker named after him recalls the work he did going over the length and breadth of Scotland to "map out" the country's mineralogy. A mathematician, chemist and professor at the University of St. Andrews in Fife, he has been honoured for his work in a more prestigious manner with the naming of the rare, lead secondary species for him, mattheddleite; first found and described at Leadhills.

Born on the rather mineralogically barren island of Orkney, he lived between 1828 and 1897.
His seminal work, "Mineralogy of Scotland", was published in 1901 and his collection of minerals
is at the National Museum for Scotland, in Edinburgh.