Out & About …

… on the North York Moors, or wherever I happen to be.

Category: Kintyre

  • Port na Cùile

    Port na Cùile

    Or where are all the Basking sharks? A report in The Scotsman on the 18th May 1939 tells of “a great migration of basking sharks into the Firth of Clyde [having taken] place in the past few days“. Large schools of sharks had been “seen passing into the Firth through the Sound of Sanda, at…

  • Saddell Castle

    Saddell Castle

    Saddell Castle was built in the early sixteenth century for the Bishop of Argyll. In one of the pillars of its gate are indentations which Kintyre tradition claims are the finger-and thumbprints of the Devil. The story goes that the Laird of Saddell mischievously wagered a village tailor to spend a night in the graveyard…

  • Mull of Kintyre lighthouse

    Mull of Kintyre lighthouse

    The road to the Mull of Kintyre is long and tortuous, finishing at a small public car park about 350m above sea level with super views across the North Channel to County Antrim in Northern Island. It’s easy to overlook how short a distance this is; up to the 1840s ferry boats plied the crossing,…

  • Carradale Point

    Carradale Point

    A Brobdingnagian finger pointing due south into the Kilbrannon Sound. The headland is protected by a jungle of rhododendron and populated by feral goats. A narrow dyke of igneous microgabbro 23 to 66 million years old runs down the centreline of the isthmus but the dominant rock is much, much older, heavily banded Schist, folded…

  • Skipness Castle

    Skipness Castle

    A spur of the moment to turn right after leaving the Lochranza to Cloanaig ferry brought us to Skipness Castle. We could tell from the map there was a castle but hadn’t expected this gem. And another one probably built by Dubhghall mac Suibhne — of the MacSween clan — who also built Lochranza castle,…