Isle of Arran, looking down from a high point, south of Brodick.
Isle of Arran, east coast, south of Whiting Bay.
To reach the beach, close by the standing stones, there is a narrow corridor of cut steps between two walls of rock. Red rock on the right hand side, in horizontal layers of rock time. The layers look as if they are made of fire and have encased themselves just to see what happens in the centuries to come. They are still on fire. Rock ridges are warm to the touch, soft and crumbling as the red fire bark of old sequoias.
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| The steps to the beach, looking up |
Who made the steps between the rocks? I think it must have been smugglers long ago, with a perfect secret passageway between the rocks.
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| smuggler steps, looking down |
The beach fans out into a spread of pebbles. The grey lichen-covered wall on the left hand side of the staircase that looks like a man-made wall, continues out into the water, a promontory of the past. The sea is calm today, no waves, hardly a wrinkle on the surface. The small and weathered standing stones on the cliff top must have been a sign, a beacon, looking out to sea. Today they are almost hidden by the grass and ferny foliage.
A signpost marks a path to Whiting Bay. Once the cliff is left behind, the path turns into stones and boulders by the sea. Each step becomes a stride, a balance, a shift of weight, a jump across a stream of water, heading to the sea. Each step has to be considered, and manoeuvred, each stone a place of tilting and swaying and recovery of balance.
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| Holy Isle, evening sunlight |
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The next day’s walk heads north from Lamlash, where the road turns into a track and then a path along the shore. We walk uphill and then along the clifftop, past Hamilton Isle which is a bundle of rocks circled, held together, like a bunch of oats or barley, by the rope of sea. We are following a path marked on the map. It turns left away from the coast, still uphill. It turns into Fern Aisle, with hardly any sky to see, for the mass of green fronds waving overhead. Until we come out onto a promontory and the sea is far far below and there is nothing between the grassy tufts on cliff edge, and the sea.
Yellow grass along the cliff edge.
Far below, the rocky remainder
of shore. And the sea.
Between grass and sea
there is nothing to be seen.
Between feet and sea
there is nothing to be seen.
This willowy nothing
makes me want to lean out
to fill its airy emptiness
with some definite horizon –
trees or bushes, stones or rocks, some form,
some hefty solid something
to stuff its arrogance of nothing
into
The ferns disappear, the sun comes out, while the path becomes clear, not overgrown but stony, not carpeted with wet grass. There are pine trees bordering the path and colourful wild flowers. But there are also, further back from the path, areas where the trees have been felled and old grey tree stumps witness our steps downhill. At the crossroads the wooden signposts indicate the direction we want to follow, to reach the stone circle, which has been consistently called a car park. The track is wide enough for lorries which must have transported the trunks of the felled trees. But here, the map differs from the terrain. The map shows about half a kilometer from crossroads to stone circle (or car park) but the track winds on under a sombre sky. At least 2 kilometers, and still no end in sight. Even C, who is a map enthusiast and whose reading skills I put faith in, since I have no sense of direction of my own, even he agrees the map bears no resemblance to what we see and that it is wrong.
But eventually we hear the faint sound of traffic which grows louder so we must be approaching the road marked on the map, and the stone circle. And soon, a small path covered in soft grass leads to the stone circle, a group of small stones hidden by the long grass foliage outside the charmed ring of short grass. These are rotund stones, with an intimate feel to them, not standing stones, but more sitting down stones, at ease, relaxed, these valley stones, like a fairy ring, a welcoming gathering place after the long trudge over the wild cliff tops.
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