Isle of Staffa
The Isle of Staffa is a small, uninhabited island in the Inner Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland whose extraordinary geological formations and the celebrated Fingal's Cave have made it one of the most visited natural wonders in Britain despite its remoteness and the difficulty of landing in anything but calm weather. The island is composed entirely of basalt lava columns identical in form to those of the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland, both having been produced by the same great volcanic episode sixty million years ago, and the columns at Staffa create cliff faces and cave roofs of geometric precision that seem more like deliberate architecture than geological process.
Fingal's Cave is the principal feature, a sea cave approximately twenty metres high and sixty metres deep whose walls, floor and vaulted ceiling are formed entirely from the regular basalt columns of the island's geology. The sound of the sea within the cave, amplified and modulated by the columnar walls into something resembling music, is one of the most remarkable acoustic experiences available in the British Isles, and it was this quality that gave the cave its Gaelic name An Uamh Binn, the melodious cave. Felix Mendelssohn visited in 1829 and the experience directly inspired his Hebrides Overture, also known as Fingal's Cave, one of the most celebrated pieces of Romantic orchestral music.
The island was visited by numerous other nineteenth-century figures including Queen Victoria, Sir Walter Scott, Keats, Wordsworth and Jules Verne, all drawn by the combination of the extraordinary geology and the wild Hebridean setting. J M W Turner painted the cave and its setting, adding to the already substantial artistic and literary heritage associated with this small piece of volcanic rock.
Boat trips to Staffa operate from Oban, Mull and Iona during the summer months and landings are possible when sea conditions allow.