Stone Skimming on the Slate Isles, Scotland by Motorhome

Behind my rapidly greying beard lies a man-child folks. If you’ve read this blog before, you will be aware of this. While eyeballing the map a couple of days back, looking for an interesting place to stay, I came across the Isle of Easdale. And shortly afterwards out came the inner kid in me (read on). But first, here’s a wee video (made by the locals) about the island:

There’s a motorhome stopover at Ellenabeich on the adjacent island of Seil, good thing #1. The photos on park4night reminded me of the Norwegian Arctic, good thing #2. It only costs a tenner a night, which goes to the local community, good thing #3. A bit of research and the deal was done: Easdale is the location for the World Stone Skimming Championship! Get in, good thing #4! I’ve skimmed stones on half the beaches in Europe and quite fancy myself as a decent-ish flat stone tosser, if not quite Olympic level. :-)

Now was my chance to compete the against the very best. Sort of. The championship is in September, and now it’s May, so they’re not here. But the ‘course’ is. Which happens to be an abandoned slate quarry on one of Scotland’s Slate Islands, a story in itself.

Taking a step back for a mo, yesterday started with gas. We’d used our big bottle of LPG up and were working through the small one, so needed a top-up. We knew this was coming and had used mylpg.eu during trip ‘planning’ to mark out the few spots in Western Scotland which have LPG stations.

At this point I might say we programmed the satnav for the one at Lochgilphead, but there is only one road from Tarbert (the A83) so we didn’t bother. Full concentration on the road instead. It’s an official logging route, so has mahoosive lorries flying up and down it which we didn’t fancy rubbing against. It’s two-lane of course, but the Romans never got this far north and roughly 2% is straight. We took our time, pulled in to let cars past, and were happy to find the LPG station had gas, and a shop.

Leaving the A83 for the slightly narrower A816 (elbows in folks), we flowed into Kilmartin Glen. Ju had spotted many little red symbols on our AA map, marking out the location of cairns, forts, castles, standing stones and rock art. It turns out this valley is famous for hundreds of vestiges of 12,000 years of pre-historic habitation. History in a nutshell: the last ice age carved out the valley. The ice retreated leaving fertile land. In moved mankind. We’re still there. We’ve been there that long.

The museum at Kilmartin looked really good, but we just fancied a quick stop so headed straight for the adjacent church. Which was closed. But the graveyard has 13th and 14th century carved stone grave slabs which proved fascinating to look at, dating from around the time of the Black Death and the invention of printing.

From the graveyard you can see a series of stone cairns and standing stones spread along the valley, fields short-cropped by sheep and lambs. We were in two minds whether to bother going for a look, but ended up walking a few miles, being drawn from one site to the next by the fascinating information boards. Weirdly you’re encouraged to walk on some of the cairns to look in burial chambers. In previous excavations all the stones have been removed and replaced so are just a pile of loose stones I guess.

Parking’s a bit tight in Kilmartin, so for lunch we decamped a mile up the road to the large, flat and free parking for the 16th century Carnasserie Castle. Fed and watered, we knew the castle was a ruin (after the last resident picked the wrong side in a fight), but decided to go look anyway. Again we were really glad we did. It was once the home of John Carswell, a bishop and the guy who printed the first book in Scots Gaelic. He was clearly loaded, as there’s a lot of smooth, top-notch masonry going on. Information boards, signs, and the option to climb high on a couple of spiral staircases kept us entertained.

Back onto the road, and it was a bit of a slog if I’m honest. The views are great in places, but we could barely take our eyes off the narrow road. The final 8 miles of B road took us 30 minutes.

A few minutes of that was a brief respite from tiny roads in the car park of the Tigh An Truish pub. It’s right next to the ‘Bridge Over the Atlantic’ which connects the Isle of Seil to the mainland. Built over a traditional sea cargo route in 1792, it has a high arch to allow boats to continue passing under it. Today it’s a fun drive in a moho. Steep enough to have me wondering if a bit more speed might enable a wheelie.

When we eventually reached here I was a happy man. Partly because it meant no more driving but mainly because I like these ‘end of the world’ places. The parking is cool, with an enormous cliff behind us, topped off with suicidal sheep living life on the edge. We can make out bits of Mull and Easdale, but the view is mostly of white cottages and the pool from an old quarry.

Around the corner there’s a free sea-facing car park. Great potential for #vanlife shots of the van with the cliffs of Mull across the sea. But not so great when the weather turns, which it has today (blue skies turned to sideways blasts of rain during the night) so we’re glad we’ve a little shelter, and are giving something back to the local community.

The motorhome parking is owned by the same people as the Seafari Adventures. They run a comfy boat and less-than-comfy speedy ribs out for wildlife tours and to a whirlpool which forms in high tides. Ju thought about it for less than two seconds, and declinded a trip.

Ellenabeich is a fascinating little place. There used to be a third island in between these two: Eilean nam Beitheach. That one’s gone. It was hollowed out by the slate miners until all that was left was a thin wall of rock, like the peel of an orange. The waste was dumped into the sea, eventually joining Eilean to Seil, and forming new land on which parts of the village of Ellenabeich are built. Barely 1.5m of rock were left between the 76m deep hole inside the island and the sea.

A severe gale in 1881 toppled the thin wall and that was the end of Eilean-a-Beithich. Yesterday we had a top-notch dinner sat outside the pub built on the slate spoil (it’s idyllic, much nicer than it sounds). In the sunshine and a cool breeze we looked across to Easdale over the ‘crater’ edge of the old island.

The same once-in-a-century 1881 storm took out most of the other quarries on Easdale and Seil. Dug deep below sea level, a tsunami breached them and filled them with seawater (the locals had legged it to the hills and were safe). The industry employed hundreds at its peak, with millions of slates being shipped across the world.

Picking up old bits of slate around here (of which there are many), you can see glistening fool’s gold embedded in it, little cubes of iron pyrite. This rendered the rock unworkable by machines, making it too expensive. The flooding, and this peculiar quality of the slate, saw to the industry’s rapid decline.

These days Easdale is inhabited again, after falling to a population of 3 (or maybe 4, depending which source you believe). Around 60 folks live out there now, many retired as there’s not a massive amount of work. There’s a pub and a museum. Not a great deal else, so having a pension will be handy. Interestingly, few of them own the land their home sits on. The island is privately owned, and most have to pay a ground rent to the landlord.

So, back to the stone skimming! I had a crack at it on one of the flooded quarries on Seil, a short walk from the van. There must be a billion billion skimmers here, flat stone is everywhere. The pools are deep and with no wind the stones seemed to bounce forever. I was feeling positive about having a crack at a mythical ‘back-waller’, the 63m skim needed to get maximum points on the actual stone skimming waters on Easdale.

Today we waited for the wind and rain to die down before going over to Easdale. This requires two fingers. One to call the ferry by Klaxon and one to switch on a Light. Fair enough. Do this and within 15 minutes (unless it’s lunch) a tiny boat appears and carries you across for £2.70. Return of course, everyone comes back.

Easdale is a fascinating little island, the end of the end of the world. It once echoed with blasts, the air filled with dust. Men and boys hammered at the rock while boats carried the finished slate away across the sea. Dirty and dangerous work.

From the boat ramp a small path leads up to a grassy area where everyone has laid out their wheelbarrow. These are used for fetching heavy stuff from the ferry back to your cottage. Next door stands a hut where you can wait for the ferry, or just leave your packages for the postman. Anyone nicking stuff here would be caught in a moment, but the sensation of trust is warming.

We (I) rushed past the pub and museum on my way to the ‘platform’. A large stone sitting at the level of water in the ‘stone skimming quarry’ as it’s now known. I stood and looked at the back wall, a cliff of slate, a long way away!

Cutting to the chase, I didn’t chuck my stones very far. The wind didn’t help, and the surface was choppy. Unsurprisingly every decent stone around the platform had already been skimmed. I can’t claim that as an excuse though. We walked the full circle of the island, taking in the huge heaps of discarded stone and picking up ten solid skimmers on the way. A second attempt yielded maybe a 25 to 30m skim. Not bad, but a long way off 63m! I think I need more gym time before the World Championship!

As we got off the ferry on the way home, a lady in storm gear was pulling on a rope to a rib, talking to a chap at its helm. “He was terrified apparently, up to his knees in water. It’ll take the lifeboat 20 minutes to get there. Once they get a rope on him, he’ll be OK.” Sheesh! They breed ’em tough up here, the sea’s not flat today! We don’t know who she was talking about, but I’d be terrified too.

We’re in for another night here before heading up towards the ferry port of Oban. No more ferries for us though, not this time anyway. We’re aiming for a parkrun on Saturday morning, then making our way up towards Glen Coe. All’s good though, we’re back to enjoying life after the slight downer of leaving Arran.

Cheers, Jay