Over The Hill

The hills of Arran were a no-go area today, with winds in excess of 70kph forecast at summit level and a cloud base of 600m, we decided to do a low level coastal walk directly from Lochranza. Mairi had lead a walk to The Cock of Arran last year, and we decided to repeat that walk, Janet kindly volunteering to lead us, as she had been on Mairi's walk.

There are some walks that just turn out to be gems for reasons other than the actual walk itself, and this was one such walk. So much interest did this walk provide, so many questions, some I have found the answers to, others just raised further questions. And so, I have chosen to style this report not as a walk description but rather to record some of the very interesting facts I have since managed to find out about the areas around Laggan and Cock Farm. I hope you find them interesting.

The anticipation started as we crossed the open moorland above Glen Chalmadale on a track which just oozed of past footsteps treading the bleak hillside, the track, just wide enough for a small cart contoured the hillside and descended towards the early 18th century dwellings at Laggan. Here, amongst the walled sheep pens, lies an old cottage, doors and windows now blocked with stone, but on close inspection, an obvious dwelling place of those who occupied this area before the clearances, when upwards of 100 people involuntarily left this strip of coast and boarded ships for Canada. This was my first surprise, having read a number of books on the clearances, Arran, as far as I can remember, has not featured in any of them. I was quite surprised to find that in excess of 400 inhabitants of this most southerly of the islands had left for Canada in the early 19th century, and are actually commemorated in a beautifully constructed memorial at Lamlash, raised by their descendants now living in Canada.

A short kilometre west of Laggan we stopped to study a number of walled remains, marked on the map as "Salt Pans", and yet another step back in time as these buildings are all that remain of the short lived Duchess Anne's Salt Pans, when, for about 20 years in the early 18th century salt was extracted from the seawater by means of boiling the water to leave only the salt. This was then used in fish curing processes. The fuel for the fires was coal, extracted in the same area, and which, with its source exhausted, saw the demise of the salt industry, leaving only the ruins that we see today.

On the hillsides just above the salt pans lies the walled ruins of Cock Farm, an uninteresting looking strip of land. However, this was once the home of the Macmillan family, the descendants of whom include Daniel and his brother Alexander Macmillan, the co-founders of the Macmillan publishing company, and Harold Macmillan, the Conservative politician and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957–1963. Quite a leap from humble beginnings considering the young Daniel had "no education beyond that which four or five years at the village school could provide, along with what he gleaned from Bible reading" - (Ref: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).

And still more was to come, this walk was so full of interesting aspects, that, truthfully I doubt if I really took in the scenery, fine as it was, as most of our walk and talk was of the historical nature of this walk, much of which we speculated on, thus the questions, of which I was then able to indulge myself in some internet research over the last few days in order to provide such information as I have in this report.

From ruined buildings our next venture was "underground". The OS map lists Ossian's Cave as a historical feature west of the salt pans. And here we have a conundrum to which I believe I have the answer. Let me explain. We located the position, as shown on the map for Ossian's Cave and confirmed by GPS fix. A rather small entrance through which Alan squeezed his shoulders to find that the internal size was no more than that offered by a small, one man tent; large enough to lie down in, and possibly sit in, but not a large enough to stand in. A bit of a disappointment we thought, not much at all. And so off we set walking along the coastline, thinking that was the end of Ossian's Cave.

However, some 300m further west along the shoreline, Lawrie spotted what looked like another cave in the hillside, and so we investigated, and had quite a surprise. For this cave, was indeed a cave of some size, we could stand in the immediate outside entrance, from which we had to crawl through a shoulder wide opening which lead into a very large and spacious interior. So large that it towered above us rising up inside the hillside, and at the back there was another smaller passageway, down which we did not venture, but which appeared to go some distance into the hillside. The walls were a mixture of red rock and a black harder rock - and it was exceptionally dry inside, so much so that we could dust ourselves down when we crawled back out without leaving any residue on our clothing. Was this the real Ossian's Cave, we certainly thought so! And it would appear, so does the RCAHMS (Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland), as I found when researching the cave which states that the OS mapping is incorrect in it's location of Ossian's Cave; a screen-shot of the relevant page is shown opposite.

On a day such as today, nothing was going to surprise me, and so it was logical that we should pay a visit to the fairies in Fairy Dell. A once thriving fishing community, and the breakwater is still visible on the shoreline, Fairy Dell now consists of a single small cottage, in the woods behind which lies a stone and tree circle together with a shallow pool in the small stream running from the hillside above. Here, complete with their own small bench alongside the pool, the fairies play. With quite deference so as not to disturb them, we paid our respects, and left!

The walk takes its name from the next geological feature on the route "The Cock of Arran", a large sandstone boulder which, before erosion destroyed its head, looked like a strutting cockerel when viewed from off-shore, and, apparently was used as a visual navigation point by local fishermen returning along the coastline. Today, it offered us the chance of a short scramble to stand on it's shoulder and survey all around us.

This may be a coastal walk, but the rough shoreline makes for some scrambling up and down among the large boulders which abound along the route, and is also an area of some geological interest, a subject of which I have very little knowledge. But I could not leave this walk without reference to Hutton's Unconformity, the name given to specific geological formations found directly along this part of the coastline, and which we had some discussions as to which of the formations we could see were those of Hutton's Unconformity, the descriptions of which is; - and here I unashamedly quote from scottishgeology.com -

"It was here at Lochranza in particular that Hutton first found evidence that supported his ‘Uniformitarianism’ theory – that the Earth was much older than previously thought. Here, gently dipping layers of sedimentary rocks are seen to overlie steeply dipping metamorphic rocks. To Hutton’s eyes, the basal rocks had a history much older than the overlying rocks. He proposed that they had been created, deformed, uplifted and eroded, whereupon they were then overlain by sediments deposited in the sea to create the younger rocks. This whole unit must then have been uplifted to its current position for the process of erosion to begin again. Hutton correctly perceived that this could only have happened over an incredibly long period of time. This became one of several unconformities that Hutton identified."

All of this in a second-choice walk, plus, a visit to the fairies in Fairy Dell. The initial disappointment of not climbing Goatfell had long disappeared before the end of this amazing walk, which in 5kms of coastline held so much social history and geological detail, that this walk must rank as one of the most interesting I have done - I don't think this is the last I have seen of Arran, roll on the next visit.

A great day, thanks Janet and everyone for your company.