Glencoe the Village is known by locals in it’s Gaelic name as ‘A’ Chàrnaich’ meaning "the place of cairns” and found in the Lochaber area of the Scottish Highlands.
Glen Coe is sometimes called the ‘glen of weeping’, due to it’s terrible history of inter-clan hostility and murder. The most well known being the Massacre of Glencoe. On February 13th, 1692, acting on behalf of the government of King William III following the Glorious Revolution, Captain Campbell lead his soldiers to enact the treacherous slaughter of the Clan MacDonald at Glencoe. Some clansmen escaped but their chief, 33 other men, 2 women, and 2 children were slaughtered in their sleep.
Glen Coe cradles evidence of a series of volcanic eruptions and an ancient caldera collapse. For geologists, this is where the idea of ‘cauldron subsidence’, now called ‘caldera collapse’, was born over 100 years ago.
A caldera is a large cauldron-like hollow that forms shortly after the emptying of a magma chamber/reservoir in a volcanic eruption. The ground surface then collapses downward into the emptied magma chamber, leaving a sometimes massive depression at the surface.
In the glen you might glimpse sheep, wild mountain goats, or even a red deer stag. Diversity of bird life here is rich, from water-loving dippers to whooper swans.