Blackwaterfoot to King’s Cave

The west side of Arran is lovely, it is quieter and less tourist-oriented than the east side, and you get views of Kintyre. The tiny village of Blackwaterfoot sits along the even tinier harbour. There used to be a huge burial cairn above Blackwaterfoot, but the stones were plundered for building material. I really like the name Blackwaterfoot but do not know the origins of the name. Blackwaterfoot was the beginning point of our walk to King’s cave.

There were no views of Kintyre this morning, or anything else for that matter, as the rain had moved in and it was a day for low level walking. The walk started out at the harbour and then cuts through the Shikine golf course where nobody cares that you wander right through the golf course, although there were no crazy golfers out in the morning rain, just a few workers driving a gator. The worm catching oyster catchers were on the course though.

What is really funny are the signs absolutely forbidding golfers from going after stray golf balls in the field next door, as it is in crop. It was a cereal, likely barley. I thought the golf course was pretty cool looking for a round of golf and sure enough, it ranks as one of the top 100 in the UK.

After crossing a few sheep pastures we walked to an area known as Doon, which has really interesting columnar cliffs facing the sea. The path dropped down to the sea and we walked along a beach toward the caves. Just prior to reaching the caves, a herd of young people streamed down the hillside toward the caves as well.

They all poured into the first set of caves so we passed those caves by and carried on to King’s cave, which is the 6th of 15 caves along the sea. Legend has it that Robert the Bruce hid in King’s cave (thus the name) while fleeing, after his defeat in Perthshire. There is also a story about his encounter with a spider, which inspired him to try again, thus changing the course of Scottish history; however, there is really no evidence to support the legend and the spider encounter may have been cooked up by Walter Scott.

The caves are really spectacular and quite large. Further along the beach we met the people who were on the summit of Goatfell with us the other day. Yesterday, we met the Scot with whom we talked to on the Glen Rosa trail...Arran is a really small place.

After checking out all the caves we continued up to a path through a forested area and back to a car park. From the car park, we opted to loop back down a different path though the forest and back down to the beach, rather than take the paved road back to Blackwaterfoot. This way we could return to the caves that were full of people when we first walked the beach. This proved to be a great plan, as the beach and caves were deserted, so we had our lunch in the cave and then walked back to Blackwaterfoot.

Before returning to the car we cut through the golf course where I yelled ‘die-hard golfers!’ to a couple of guys on the course who yelled back ‘die-hard walkers!’ it was raining of course. When we got to the golf course’s tearoom, the sun peered out. We were so muddy we removed our boots and rain pants before entering the tearoom, which was newly built with the aid of lottery money, it was very nice.

A word about the cheese, the Scottish cheese is incredibly good, Arran has a cheese maker so we dropped in there yesterday to buy some Arran cheddar. Our favourite is hot pepper, but we also have whisky, smoked, herb and mustard. They are all so good that we are really gorging on cheese.

As always, click on pics to enlarge....

Blackwaterfoot

Columnar Cliffs at Doon

Walk-through cave to entrance of King's Cave

Low walk-through cave

Farms near Machrie

Hut circles - evidence of Iron Age round houses

Misty loch

Pillar in between two large caves

The view from our lunch stop

Weather breaking near the Shiskine golf course

Goatfell from Brodick

Brodick Castle

Ferry leaving Brodick for Ayrshire