Welcome to Stories of Scotland, a podcast exploring Scottish history and culture through adventures and investigations.

We delve deep into locks, we hunt for lost treasure and we metaphorically ransacked museums

to bring you both famous and infamous stories of Scotland. My name is Annie and I'm an archivist and

historian. I'm Jenny, a Scottish mountain goat.

In this episode, we're taking another exploration into the secrets of Loch Ness.

We'll start by examining the awe-inspiring natural history of the Loch, and then we'll

have a look at how science and technology have played a massive role in how people relate

to Loch Ness and the myths of the monster.

This is the second of two episodes themed on Loch Ness.

In the first episode, we focus on the ancient Scottish peoples known as the Picks.

And think about whether their carvings of hybrid beasts could somehow be connected to the legend of the Loch Ness monster.

In this episode, I'm going to look deep into Celtic mythology to think about

how people made sense of the landscape before they had the science to unravel the riddles of the

natural wonder that is Loch Ness. But first, let's kick off with the natural history of the area,

because that is a story that shaped not only the land, but all of the people who have lived there since.

Every community that has lived in the Scottish Highlands

has had to adapt somehow to harness this jagged, rough land

to be able to survive and thrive here.

Jenny, who has a strange love of rocks and mountains,

is going to explain the geology behind the formation of Loch Ness.

So Jenny, how did the Loch come to be such a monster size and part of such a dramatic landscape of hills and mountains?

Yes, well it is massive. It's got more water in it than all the lakes in England and Wales and it's deeper than the North Sea.

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