Skulferatu #86 - The King's Cave, Arran

 

To get to my walk for today to the King’s Cave, I was dropped off at a nearby car park, helpfully called Kings Cave Car Park. From there I followed the path through a woodland plantation that eventually took me out on to a steep path that descended down to a rocky and pebble strewn beach below.  There I found the King’s Cave, which is one of a series of caves in the sandstone cliffs that were formed during the Ice Age, around ten thousand years ago.

 

The King’s Cave

 

The caves along the coast

 

The caves in the cliffs

 

View from the caves down to Drumadoon Point

 

The King’s Cave is the largest of these caves and the name comes from the legend that Robert the Bruce once took shelter here when on the run, and that it was in this cave that he met the famous spider.  For those of you not familiar with the story, Bruce had suffered a heavy defeat by the English army and was on the run.  While taking shelter in a cave he noticed a little spider trying to weave a web.  It would get so far, then fall, but would climb back up and attempt to start again.  Eventually, after falling numerous times it succeeded in building its web.  From watching this Bruce took the lesson that ‘if at first, you don’t succeed, try, try, try again’.  He then went on to defeat the English army at Bannockburn.  Though the caves are full of little spiders, it is unlikely that there is any truth to the story or that Bruce even sheltered here.

 

Before the cave was known as the King’s Cave, it was referred to as Fingal’s Cave, after the legendary Irish giant Fionn mac Cumhaill or Fin McCool, which let's face it is much easier to pronounce.  What he had to do with this cave I have no idea, as all I can remember about him comes from some of the stories we were told in Primary School.  Though what I remember is not so much the actual stories but more that his size seemed to vary quite massively from story to story.  I’m sure in one he must have been about five hundred feet tall and in another he was only about twelve feet tall, which was something that even at six or seven years old I wanted an explanation for.  I wanted to understand and to make some sort of sense of how he achieved this.  Was there some sort of magic involved?  Or, like Alice in Wonderland, did he take potions that made him bigger or smaller?  Unfortunately, no satisfactory explanation was given by my teacher other than ‘they are just legends, what does it matter?’

 

Cave and cliffs

 

The caves

 

A view into one of the caves

 

Looking out from one of the caves

 

Inside one of the caves

 

After exploring all the caves, I sat on a rock by the beach and dozed in the warm afternoon sun.  Then, feeling lovely and refreshed I got up, left the Skulferatu that had accompanied me on my walk in the King’s Cave and ambled off back through the woods.

 

Skulferatu #86

 

Skulferatu #86 in a gap inside the cave walls

 

Map showing the location of Skulferatu #86

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are –

 

Latitude 55.526129

Longitude -5.353452

 

what3words: practical.unwanted.boss

 

I used the following sources for information on the Kings Caves –

 

Arran of the Bens, the Glens and the Brave

by MacKenzie MacBride

1911

 

The Book of Arran

Edited by J. A. Balfour

1910

 

Skulferatu - #85 - Giants' Graves, Arran

 

It was time to journey away again for a quick break, so I headed off to the Isle of Arran on the west coast of Scotland.  On my first day there I went for a rather lovely walk up the hills by Whiting Bay.  The walk takes you up by the quite spectacular Glenashdale Falls and then round to the Giants’ Graves and the views from there over to Holy Isle.  The walk was steep in parts, which wouldn’t normally be a problem, but a touch of Angina made it a bit wobbly for me on some of the steeper bits.  However, though I may be fat and old, I’m determined when it comes to getting places and I soon walked it off.  After a quick stop at the viewing platform looking out on Glenashdale Falls I carried on round and up to the top of the hill and the Giants’ Graves.

 

Glenashdale Waterfall

 

The Giants’ Graves are actually the remains of two chambered cairns that were built around five thousand years ago and sit on top of a hill near Whiting Bay.  The chambers in each would originally have been roofed with large stone slabs and then enclosed in a cairn made up of thousands of smaller stones.

 

View of the Giants’ Graves

 

View of the Giants’ Graves

 

The cairns were used as burial sites, but not quite in the way we now bury bodies.  That reverence and respect for a corpse wasn’t there in the way we know it, and bodies didn’t tend to just be buried and left alone.  No, our ancient ancestors seemed to have had religious practices that involved leaving corpses out in the open to have the flesh eaten from them by the birds and the beasts, before they would then pick up the remaining bones, burn some and place these and the other unburnt bones into the chambers of the cairn.  What the significance of this was we’ll never know, but it probably all meant something deeply spiritual to them.

 

View of the Giants’ Graves

 

View of the Giants’ Graves

 

Given these religious practices the cairns were not permanently sealed, but rather used over and over again. 

 

Only some of the larger stones in the cairns now remain, as most of the others were taken away to be used for building with.

 

Excavations carried out of the two cairns found human bone, pottery, flint knives and stone arrowheads.

 

Graffiti carved into one of the stones

 

Before making my way back down to Whiting Bay and a spot of lunch, I left the Skulferatu that had accompanied me on my walk on one of the stones that make up the Giants’ Graves.

 

Skulferatu #85

 

Skulferatu #85 on one of the stones of the Giants’ Graves

 

Skulferatu #85 on one of the stones of the Giants’ Graves

 

Map showing the location of Skulferatu #85

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are –

 

Latitude 55.476701

Longitude -5.097959

 

what3words: acquaint.closet.deeply

 

I used the following sources for information on the Giants’ Graves –

 

The Book of Arran

Edited by J. A. Balfour

1910

 

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