DRUIM BRECCIA
The exposure in the Druim breccia is adequate to map the unit but is not particularly good.
The unit does not form a major topographic feature but the northern boundary is mapped in by a small break of slope in the valley of the Allt Eas Ghairbh Ghraid (NGR 82387725).
The unit is unconformable on the Tollie gneiss and the Garbh amphibolite and is unaffected by the structures in both of these units.
The unit forms a small outlier being 210 metres in width.
Exposed surfaces show the rock red and grey in colour with angular clasts, matrix supported. The unit is observed to be horizontally bedded. The fresh surfaces of the Druim breccia showed the rock to have a fine to medium grain matrix and are pink red in colour.
Matrix composition was observed to be quartz and feldspar (no mode was discernible). Individual grains were sub angular and showed a moderate degree of sphericity. The clasts in the rock vary in size from 3 to 250 millimetres, being sub angular and showing a low degree of sphericity, suggesting that the clasts have sustained little transportation and where deposited close to their source area. The composition of the clasts includes quartz, amphibolite and schist. No gneiss clasts where observed.
The oblate shaped clasts are observed to be imbricated with a paleocurrent direction from the Northwest (this is consistent with the lack of gneiss clasts in the breccia). A possible source for the breccia would be an upland area to the Northwest formed of the Gairloch supracrustal group.
Therefore, these breccias where interpreted as locally derived screes lying on the pre - Torridonian landscape.
The small size of the outcrop precluded the production of a graphic log with about 2-3-metre thickness of breccia exposed. This also made correlation difficult and the beds cannot be assigned to any specific group in the Torridonian, although intuitively the beds are likely to be Diabeg in age.
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