Lochranza.

4.30pm, 06/05/89

~ Arran has a particular place in my affections, as it was the location of many idyllic (or so they seem from this distance) childhood holidays, long July months on Roy Spiers’s farm of Kilbride at the south end of the island. Our little world there was sequestered - most days we went no further than south to the beach, west to the Lagg Inn in its palm-tree'd glen, east to Jenny’s (Miss Hamilton’s post office and general store at Shannochie, the last thatched post office in Scotland), or north on the Auchareoch track for a picnic on the whin-scented moor (this being before the forestry arrived). A Stewart’s bus* would take us to Whiting Bay now and again, or even Lamlash, but Brodick and the north end were a foreign country, probably the haunt of wolves and bandits, and only ventured into by way of an annual Round Arran coach trip.

So, the hills played no part in these holidays, which ended when Mr Spiers retired and the farm was incorporated into an adjoining one. It was many years before I returned to Arran, a trip in the course of which I climbed my very first mountain - I only intended to walk from Lochranza YH to Loch na Davie and back, but in the absence of any obvious obstacle I just kept going, and going, eventually finding myself at the top of Caisteal Abhail, with its glorious view across to Cir Mhòr, and continuing east along the ridge to Suidhe Fheargas and back by road to Lochranza. You could say I was hooked.

So there was an element of pilgrimage in this May ’89 weekend trip, bus from Brodick to Lochranza and a retracing of my steps of 12 years previously, steps without which I may have ended up devoting my leisure time to golf or fishing or something equally pointless.


* If anyone’s remotely interested, this is a brief overview of the Arran bus services in the 1950’s, information partly from memory but mostly from Mitchell-Luker’s Arran Bus Book.

BANNATYNE - (dark green with red stripe and white roof) Blackwaterfoot - Brodick.

GORDON - (dark blue and light blue with red stripe) Brodick - Whiting Bay

LENNOX - (red with cream stripe) Whiting Bay - Brodick

McMILLAN - (white and black) Shiskine - Lochranza

RIBBECK - (royal blue and cream) Brodick - Catacol

STEWART - (white with blue waistband and green roof) Corriecravie - Brodick.

WEIR - (dark red and white) Machrie - Brodick

By 1960 the invasion of private cars was under way, and consolidation of the picturesque Arran bus services was swift and remorseless. Within a year or two, McMillan had been taken over by Weir, Gordon by Lennox, and Stewart by Bannatyne. By 1967 Weir had ceased operating, while Lennox and Ribbeck were subsumed into the Arran Transport & Trading Co. Bannatyne’s service ran until 1973, when it too was taken over by AT&T. Now, of course, Stagecoach is lord of all.