North Arran

There is a steady climb from the start of the walk to a boggy moorland pass at 240 metres high between Tor Mheadnonach and Creag Ghlas. Close to the right lies a disused slate quarry which mined Lochranza slate, formerly carted down to the village.

A steep sloping path leads down to a ruined stone house with a drystone wall (formerly thatched with small windows to keep out wind and winter snow), alongside a cow barn connected by a covered passage. Further on, the larger Cock Farm — also now a ruin — was home to a wealthier family and served as the ancestral home of the Macmillan family (whose most famous descendant was Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963).

The shore path passes over an 80-metre-high raised beach formed when sea levels were much higher due to the massive weight of ice sheets; as the ice melted, the land rose, leaving raised beaches backed by stranded sea cliffs. Ossian's Cave at the base of a stranded sea cliff features faint carvings of ships and dates said to be the work of sheltering quarrymen. The Cock of Arran (a huge sandstone boulder once resembling a cockerel crowing, used to guide fishermen home before it lost its head to erosion) precedes further wonders on the return journey including An Scriodan rockfall and Hutton's Unconformity, an unusual geological formation named after local geologist James Hutton.

Acknowledgment: Text derived from the Out and Out Series; Discovering the Countryside on Foot. Pictures courtesy of Wikipedia.