Two luncheons, a queen, a saint and a cow on the fair isle of Inchmarnock.

Leaving Kylie the lonely dolphin to her buoy friend at the mouth of the West Kyle of Bute...

...we set off across the broad expanse of the Sound of Bute towards...

 ...the low lying but lovely island of Inchmarnock, which lies off the west coast of its larger neighbour Bute. Inchmarnock was home to St Marnock and long before that to the Queen of the Inch. The beaches on Inchmarnock's west coast are similar to those of Ardlamont Point. They consist of steep rock shelf with intermittent infill of cobbles. We were unable to  land where Tony, Jennifer and I had landed on a previous visit as...

 ...all the cobbles had gone and the spot was already occupied by one of the famous herd of Inchmarnock organic cattle. However, we were able to land a little further on...

 ....near where Mike and I had camped almost exactly a year previously.

 The steep storm beach of cobbles was stacked high in a series of ledges, which represent the height reached by previous storms with the oldest being at the top.

With a wonderful view over the sea to Arran, it was the ideal place to stop for an extended lunch. Since we were cutting our trip short by a day we had two luncheons to eat. We took our time savouring the last luncheons on our trip. We enjoyed the food and our situation, after all we still had 32km to go and would be paddling late into the summer evening anyway.

Sea Kayaking Desktop Calendar March 2008

Paddling across Inchmarnock Sound under a fantastic skyscape.

If you would like to download the March desktop, it is available in sizes of 1920x1200, 1280x1024, 1024x768 and 800x600.

For best results, do not use the photos from this blogger site but visit the Scottish Sea Kayaking Photo Gallery and click on the size of your desk top. Most visitors to this site use 1280x1024 or 1024x768. You can check your desktop size by right clicking anywhere on it then left click properties then left click settings.

Other months to follow....

In search of a Stone Age Queen.

The north east tip of the lovely isle of Inchmarnock in the Firth of Clyde is a great bank of stones. At the end of the Neolithic Age and the start of the Bronze Age, some 4,000 years ago, the stones on this beach attracted a group of people who built a large cairn just above the shore.


Jennifer and Tony explore the cairn.

Their efforts were sustained by the fertility of Inchmarnock which at that time was covered with oak and hazel forests which were teeming with wildlife. Nearby an ancient deposit of hazel shells, three feet deep, has been uncovered. Beside the cairn these people buried the body of an important female member of their tribe.



She was buried with a magnificent jet necklace inside a grooved and rebated cist. The cairn and the cist were excavated by Dorothy Marshall in 1960. The skeleton became known as the "Queen of the Inch". Her necklace is now on display in the Bute Museum. It was originally thought to have been made from local lignite but it after being studied by the National Museums Scotland (using X ray fluorescence spectrometry) it has been discovered that it is composed of at least five older necklaces made from Whitby jet. This and the style of the cist suggest a link between the West of Scotland and Wessex (and in turn to Brittany).


Looking north west from the cairn to the mouth of Loch Fyne.

After being excavated and carbon dated the skeleton was returned to the cist in its original site and a glass lid was fitted. Which sea kayakers could resist exploring for such a find? Not us! Hamish Haswell-Smith in The Scottish Islands gives the position of the glass covered cist as 80m to the SSW of the cairn. We searched very carefully but could not find it. The stone slabs below were in about the right position.


Was this the site of the cist?

As you can see the ground is heavily trampled by a herd of organic highland cows. We wondered if the stone slabs might be over the cist to protect it or whether it had been removed and the slabs now marked its original position. I decided to write to the owner and his wife replied as follows:

"Dear Douglas

thank you very much indeed for your email. As you can see I am out of the country at the moment. I have a lot to tell you but if it can wait until my return to the UK I will give you a full brief. Everything is in safe hands and all will be explained."

Perhaps it will still be possible to see the Queen of the Inch in her glass covered cist.

When mountains crumble to the sea.

If the sun refused to shine, I would still be loving you.
When mountains crumble to the sea, there will still be you and me.
"Thank You" Led Zeppelin

Finding an erratic pink rhyolite pebble on the beach at Inchmarnock took my mind to its source. It came from the mountain of Buachaille Etive Mor which sits between Glen Etive and GlenCoe nearly 100km away to the NNE. Its Gaelic name means great shepherd of Etive. It is composed mainly of rhyolite, a pink volcanic rock, which gives excellent scrambling and rock climbing.


This is the Rannoch Wall which has many popular climbing routes.


My friend, John, completes a climb up the face of the Rannoch Wall,


This is an old B&W print I took in 1973. I used an orange filter to darken the blue in the sky. It shows the King's House Hotel, which is situated at the Buachaille's feet. It was one of the old staging inns at which horse drawn carriages would stop after a day's travel. The next inn on the road north is the Clachaig, at the west end of Glen Coe, some 14km away and the next to the south is the Inveroran Hotel, 15km to the south over the Rannoch Moor, near the shores of Loch Tulla. It took a long time to travel in those days.


I wonder how long this pebble took on its journey south to Inchmarnock?

Rounders and Luncheon on Inchmarnock

Tony said "What a day indeed- a classic. Dont forget.. as well as the glacial deposits we also found a complete bat and ball set on the beach!
Looking forward to the next time.."

Indeed we did, a spiffing time was had by all.



Games were followed by second luncheon, or was it third breakfast?

Inchmarnock's beach of treasures.

Our weekend trip to Inchmarnock in the Firth of Clyde was blessed with stunning light.



We landed on a lonely beach which was patrolled by a golden eagle.



We were not the only ones disturbing the eagle's domain. Herring gulls were mobbing it.



The beach was full of treasures. The pink pebble is rhyolite which was transported here from Buachaille Etive Mor, nearly 100km to the NNE, by glaciers in the last ice age.

Another fabulous day on the Clyde

Flat calm start to the day.



We took the ferry to Bute then headed over the West Kyle of Bute to Ardlamont Point on the mainland.



We then headed down pat the west side of Inchmarnock before heading back to Bute.



Of course it did not stay calm and we had a brisk paddle into the wind for the last 9km.

It does not end there. I got the car stuck in the mud just as it was getting dark and the rain started and we only had 30 mins to catch the last ferry! Fortunately a friendly farm lad came with a very large JCB and pulled me out with a huge chain. (I had my tow hitch on.) We made the ferry by the skin of our teeth.

What a day!