Dunure Castle and the roasting of the Abbot!

The grim walls of Dunure Castle on the Ayrshire coast can be best appreciated from the sea. After all, the sea was the motorway in the age of the great maritime castles of Scotland. At that time travel across land was time consuming, arduous and dangerous. The castles were built to control the faster sea routes used by travellers, traders and invaders.

They all have a history but few can have been witness to such an awful deed as the roasting of the Abbot of Crossraguel Abbey. In 1570 Gilbert, the 4th Earl of Cassillis, kidnapped the Abbot, Alan Stewart, and threw him into the Black Vault which lay deep within the walls of Dunure. Here he roasted Stewart on a spit until he agreed to sign over the Church's land to Gilbert.



Today you can paddle into the nearby fishing harbour of Dunure. The village pub, the Anchorage, is as convenient for the sea as the castle. It makes a welcome stop for the modern day seafaring kayaker.

Sea kayaking heaven: a gneiss time on Lewis.

Here are more memories of a fantastic summer. I have posted a full photo gallery of our summer trip to NW Lewis over on the Scottish Sea Kayaking Photo Gallery. This is an extreme form of self indulgence but in the middle of a very poor spell of weather, when I am not feeling particularly well, it is rather nice reliving such adventures.

Arch #2

The second in an occasional series of arches; another island and another rock. This graceful arch is of Torridonian (old red) sandstone and is on the lovely isle of Tanera Beg in the Summer Isles. These lie at the mouth of Loch Broom in the north west of Scotland.

Arch #1

There are few sights more satisfying on a sea kayaking trip than an arch. I especially like ones you can paddle through. You really feel you are interacting with environment when you are under an arch. This one just invited us through. I think part of the attraction is that, just like us, an arch is mortal and will not be there forever.

To my mind nothing defines the interface between land and sea so well as an arch.

This magnificent arch is at the foot of Bloodstone hill on the island of Rum. Green agates are found in this rock. They contain little tiny red flecks of iron, and it is these that give the stone and the mountain its name.

The geology here is very complex, Bloodstone Hill lies at the boundary of granite and Torridonian sandstone. It is also covered with sedimentary conglomerate rocks containing igneous rocks from the eruption which formed the Cuillin of Rum. These sedimentary rocks are then covered with lava flows that are younger than the Rum eruption and which probably came from the later Mull eruption to the south.



If you look carefully at the top slopes of Bloodstone Hill, you can see where these lavas have flowed over the top of the hill and started to run down ancient river valleys. The lava solidified before it got to the sea and has left steep escarpments.

Indoor echoes of dripping water.

How prophetic was yesterday's post? I went to bed and dreamed of dripping Hebridean caves and woke to a steady drip somewhat closer to home. Last night Glasgow was lashed by winds up to force 9 and torrential rain. My roof was damaged and the rain has driven in.



Today's BBC's synoptic chart shows more winds of up to force 9 again will hit Glasgow and the Clyde. I would normally have gone windsurfing at Troon but I have a dental abscess at the moment. A sore head and a leaking roof are not a good combination. I must cheer myself with another summer memory.



PS Sunday 21:25 hrs. Wind and rain are increasing; strategic pots have been placed. Why oh why did I post about dripping water?!!

Subterranean echoes of dripping water.

As I paddled alone deep inside the cave, the sounds of the outside world gradually diminished. There was only the gentlest of swell and it hardly disturbed the calm at the back of the cave. After some moments my ears and eyes gradually adjusted to the noises and colours in the cave. There was the most wonderful sound of water dripping from the darkness of the cave roof into the sea beside me. The drips echoed round walls of iridescent reds and greens above a turquoise sea.



This is sea kayaking

Easdale buoys, fools and slates.

We took the Aleut Sea II out to the small island of Easdale that lies off the west coast of Argyll's Island of Seil. We landed on a beach of dark grey slates.



These buoys adorned a building of slate.



Climbing to the top of the island, we saw the great flooded slate quarries that have hollowed out this island's heart. The photo shows the breaches in the quarry wall that a tidal wave made during the great storm of 1881. At low tide the walls are still complete and locals try and catch the fish that have been trapped inside. The quarries go down to 80m below sea level. At their peak of production, in the 1860s, Easdale slates were exported to, Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean, the United States, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador.



Easdale slate is very fine grained but it contains little cubes of iron pyrites or "fool's gold". If you break the slate open the crystals shine brightly but they soon rust when exposed to the air. If you live in one of the above countries and you come across a building with a slate roof have a look and see if the slates came from the little island of Easdale.

After the collapse of their industry, the miners and their families followed their slates to Australia, New Zealand........ They carried the names of their families and villages with them.