Alturlie Point and the Alturlie Gravels Formation

Alturlie Point is formed of a series of roughly east - west - orientated ridges that reach a maximum elevation of about 31 m OD (Firth, 1984 , Merritt, 1990 ). The promontory offers a good viewpoint from which to consider the evidence of relative sea - level change around the Inverness Firth in general (Merritt et al., 2017) , and it contains morphological evidence for shorelines at 29.3, 23.2, 16.6, 14.7 and 11.8 m OD (Firth, 1989a) (Fi g. 20 & 21). It is the type area of the Bothyhill Gravels Member of the Alturlie Gravels Formation (Merritt et al., 1995), which stretches eastwards from Alturlie Point within the ‘marine Limit’ (Fig. 14). The kettled spread is generally lower - lying than t he peninsula because it remained either beneath glacier ice, or sediment containing buried ice - masses, until relative sea level had fallen, possible to below 13 m OD (Firth, 1984) (Fig. 22). Although many of the sections in Bothyhill Pit [NH 715 491] (AP2) have degraded since being described by Merritt et al. (1995) and Fletcher et al. (1996), lower parts of the sequence were still exposed in 2017 and new exposures may become available