Ardnamurchan, on the south west coast of Scotland, is the remains of an ancient volcano. Its unique rock formations open a window into the interior of the Earth and provide geologists with a singular opportunity to observe the processes, now frozen in time, that occur deep within the crust and which have been slowly brought to the surface over the last sixty million years. In 1930, when James Richey of the British Geological Survey published his completed geological map of Ardnamurchan confirming that it was an ancient volcano, it caused much interest amongst geologists. Consequently, the following year, Richey agreed to run a field trip so that those interested could look at the volcano in some detail and augment their understanding of the Earth's interior.

Kingsley Dunham drove his professor all the way from Durham to Ardnamurchan in his two-seater Morris Cowley. Maggie never accompanied Arthur on these trips because their son Geoffrey was still only small and needed someone at home to look after him, but as the new fashion of the time was to grow tomatoes, the students joked that the real reason she stayed behind was to water the precious tomato plants. The truth was that Maggie did not enjoy university life: the lunch parties, the afternoon calls, and the expectations of a professor's wife did not sit well with her.