Walking into Fingal’s Cave, after scrambling across the rocks to reach it from the landing stage where the boat from Mull arrives, is a strangely emotional experience. It’s not just the extraordinary landscape, the precise, almost unnatural shaping of the hexagonal basalt columns that rise up high above you, the screeching of gulls and roaring of the sea as it enters and leaves the cave. That’s enough to provoke a sense of wonder. But there’s also so much history attached to the place since it was discovered by the Romantics and became the epitome of the sentimental landscape, awesome in scale, and also quite frightening. Mendelssohn, Walter Scott and Turner between them set off the fashion for visiting the cave; even Queen Victoria braved the rocking sea to experience her own moment of insignificance.
On Sunday night’s Between the Ears on Radio 3 (produced by Kate Bissell) it was possible to listen while at the same time taking a virtual visual trip into the cave.
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