The other "Serpent Stone" of Loch Ness

I omitted this little episode from the "From the Shoreline" series of last week as it merited a post of its own. I was made aware of this stone a while back by Nessie enthusiast, Doug. He had been over at Loch Ness some time ago and came upon this piece of rock quite by accident by the shores of Loch Ness. Last week, I finally got round to tracking down this stone and taking a look for myself. I took the picture shown below.

The slab of rock you see is over two feet long in length and would be a major effort for one person to lift. On first inspection, it just looked to me as if somebody has scratched a childish, serpentine figure onto the rock, perhaps with another smaller but sharper rock. That was my initial impression when I first saw Doug's own picture and put it down to somebody indulging in a form of Nessie graffiti.

However, on closer inspection, it was not clear to me that this image had been laid down in such a simple manner. I considered how an artist may have abrasively added the image; or maybe it was a fossil? In fact, it looked as if it was part of the rock itself and more crystalline in form than the surrounding rock. A close up of the rock shows that this may be more of a question for those trained in the discipline of geology than art.

It seemed improbable that nature could have laid down a regular form such as this. Indeed, if it had, it most likely was embedded in the rock as the whole rock gave the impression of being split open. So, opinions are invited as to how this serpentine image at Loch Ness came about and whether one can assign any meaning or motivation to it.

As for this being called the "other serpent stone", I will get round to what that means in a future article!

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com