‘Scenic’ detours and lessons learned on the Arran Coastal Way, a tough 65-mile circuit of the pretty Scottish island of Arran

This was the trip I realised I can’t read ordnance survey maps as well as I thought I could. I’d set off on the Arran Coastal Way a little cocky – I’d hiked six long-distance trails, after all – and returned a humble mess of stiff joints, torn muscles and battered pride. Broken in every way.

This moment of realisation I can only pinpoint with hindsight. Perched on top of the Saddle, the col between the Isle of Arran’s highest peaks, Cir Mhor and Goatfell, staring down a scree-scattered gully, was no time for wondering how I’d misread my map and mistaken a near-vertical drop for an easy hill. I just needed to get the feck down.

Going my own way

The idea of a coastal path doesn’t generally appeal to me, the endless miles of sea views and repetitive terrain. And the Arran Coastal Way comes with a good deal of road-walking too. I’m much happier among forests, lakes and mountains. So I got creative and planned to make the trail my own. Starting at Brodick, where the ferry arrives from the mainland, I’d immediately leave the coast behind and head inland to the dramatic Glen Rosa, climbing over the 432m Saddle and into Glen Sannox before heading back towards the sea at Sannox village.

My second scenic detour would be to venture into Glen Catacol in the north-west. I’d skirt around Beinn Breac and settle down for the night on the shore of Coire Fhionn Lochan, a small loch at an elevation of 335m, before heading down to where the land meets the Kilbrannan Sound a few miles north of Pirnmill to pick up the Arran Coastal Way once again.

Suddenly, it was interesting. I was looking forward to it.

Heading north out of Brodick along the Fisherman’s Walk, with the 874m Goatfell in the distance

When the ferry deposited the throngs of holiday makers at Brodick, it was a gorgeous, bright day but bitingly cold. I made tracks straight away in an effort to stay warm, setting off north along the coast through picturesque marshlands with the Goatfell range beckoning in the distance. I turned west and rose gently into Glen Rosa, a stunning valley of dramatic slopes with the crystal-clear Glenrosa Water running through. I hopped across stepping stones and drifted every now and then from the sandy track to rest on a rock and admire the views – things were looking good.

Over the Saddle

All the while up ahead of me loomed the Saddle and the imposing summit of Goatfell, the highest peak on the island. Gradually the path gained height, getting steeper by the half-mile. I took it slowly; I had 15kg on my back, thanks to some hefty camera equipment, and my fitness was at a five-year low. As I paused at a waterfall, a guy in fluoro bib shorts (a loud Lycra onesie, let’s not mess about) poked fun at my huge pack and my water filter. “What do you think the water’s going to do to you this high up?!” he said as he cupped his hands and drank straight from the stream. I smiled nicely, warned him of the perils of giardia and secretly hoped he’d suffer from a mild bout.

I crested the Saddle, and that’s when I met Whin Dyke. Ah, Whin Dyke. Known in climbing circles as a ‘chimney’, this formidable thing is a long, narrow gap in the rock that provides a challenging passage up the sheer, smooth basalt face of the mountain. I say up, because most nutters who tackle it go from north to south: scrambling up the chimney then over the col and down the rocky steps into Rosa. It’s easier and it’s safer.

Me? No, I was doing it the other way round, with tired legs and a monster pack on my back for added strain. I took a deep breath and began my descent, still not sure this was the path I should be taking, if a path at all. I’d expected the way down to be the same gradient as it was up. I now know that what I’d read on my OS map as 10m contour lines were actually 25m contour lines. It was two and a half times steeper than I’d anticipated.

The start of Whin Dyke, the chimney passage down from the Saddle into Glen Sannox

Thanks to my 65L pack, my centre of gravity was behind me and my balance completely off. Wobbly and scared, trying to shuffle down on my bum, I was sure I was on the brink of an accident. I took off my rucksack and carefully, slowly, easily lowered it down below me so I could tackle a high step unencumbered. But my bag didn’t stay put. It rolled over once, then twice, then again, gathering momentum and making its own sweet way down the mountain with no sign of stopping. I heard the crash-crash-crash long after it tumbled out of sight.

A long way down

I was stuck in the gully without water, food, my phone, my map, my compass, my thermals and my waterproofs. I sat down, trembling, and wept a few tears of terror.

Not long after, I heard the sound of shoes skidding against rock and a shout from above: “Are you OK?” A hiker who’d been sat up on the Saddle had seen my green pack plummeting and feared the worst for its owner. He’d come to my rescue. An experienced scrambler with a mess of long, matted hair and a more sensibly sized rucksack than my own, he kept me company the rest of the way down. His presence was a blessing; he blazed the trail ahead of me, sending me warnings of loose stone and slippery rock, and reassured me this was a route to be reckoned with – technically tricky and far worse than it appears on the map. Even when you read it right.

Some 100m down, I found my rucksack. It hadn’t landed somewhere inaccessible, as I’d feared, and it came off completely unscathed bar a tiny graze to the fabric. As for its contents, there was just one casualty: a broken compass. I was so relieved, I cried again.

By the time I got to the bottom and met the Sannox Burn, my legs were shot. The adrenaline that had been coursing through my body had numbed the pain while I needed it, but now my muscles were in spasm and no matter how much I stretched, I had the sensation that my quads and calves were curling in on themselves. Finding a place to camp was now top priority.

Finding a pitch

I’m my own worst enemy. Despite the urgency, I continued all the way out of Glen Sannox to the bay, along the sandy track out of the village and through the woodland the hugs the shoreline, determined to find a pitch with a view that would make this testing day worthwhile. Both my legs and the daylight were fading so I marched on, only stopping briefly to pick wood sorrel and wild garlic and to admire Sannox’s great blue-stone cliffs. Finally, after the hardest 13 miles I’ve ever hiked, I landed on a flat patch of grass a few metres back from a pastel-coloured stony beach at Millstone Point.

It was a great pitch. In the middle of the night, a herd of red deer appeared by my tent and woke me up with their breathy grunting. The next day, I was treated to a spectacular sunrise and I watched oystercatchers hop along the waterline as I fired up my stove for breakfast.

The problem was, I couldn’t move. My legs were nothing more than a couple of planks hinged to my hips. I managed to hobble past Laggan Cottage and round the Cock of Arran (snigger), but crossing the pathless boulder-fields of An Scriodan finished me off. More than once I found myself literally between a rock and a hard place – sometimes with my pack wedged between boulders, sometimes losing my footing and slipping through the cracks, my legs seizing up involuntarily as if I had rigor mortis. When I bashed my head against the side of a rock, I knew my time was up. Walking was dangerous and I needed to stop.

Rehab at Lochranza

The last food orders at the Lochranza whisky distillery are at 3:30pm and I reached the cafe with three minutes to spare. The joy! I ordered a salmon platter and a cider and studied my map. It was here, as the cider swirled around my giddy brain, that I understood my error about the contour lines.

The next few days passed in a miserable blur. I was staying at Lochranza campsite, waiting impatiently for my legs to heal in temperatures of around 4C. That’s cold when you’re not moving. For two days, I had to walk down steps backwards and I couldn’t get off the loo in the usual way. My quads were so useless I had to fall forward on my hands, then push myself off the floor. I was lucky I was opposite a whisky shop: the single malt got me through.

I probably should have come straight home but on day four I decided to make the best of this bad situation. I packed up, took the bus to Thundergay and took the 2.5-mile eastbound footpath that climbed 335m past heather, bog cotton and waterfalls, to the corrie loch at which I’d originally planned to wild camp.

A corrie loch is a small lake found up in the hills, a bowl-shaped hollow carved out by a glacier and filled by mountain streams tumbling in from above. This one’s a dream. It comes into view at the very last moment and seems to glitter orange, blue and green. There’s a white-stone beach at the near end and when I arrived, a gang of ramblers were sitting there eating sarnies, unfazed by the drizzle. I continued on the boggy path that circles the lochan and reached another beach at the far end. I set up my tent just as it was starting to hail – first lightly, then painfully – and I hid inside while it passed. It was so loud I didn’t realise I’d gained company in that time: a woman and her dog had pitched up further along the same beach. While I normally find this irritating, I was happy to have her close by. Two women, camping by themselves in the north Arran wilds. She was like me.

Coire Fhionn Lochan, reached by a 2.5-mile footpath from Thundergay

It hurt to go back down a little less the next day than it did to come up, which is to say it still hurt a lot. I distracted myself with the views across the Mull of Kintyre and Jura, and wondered pointlessly if I’d made things worse for myself. Back on the Arran Coastal Way, I took the easy road to Pirnmill and jumped on the excellent round-the-island bus to Kildonnan, where I would camp for my last night before heading home.

Warmer climes

Happily, I spent my last afternoon on Arran walking a section of the trail I had set out to do: an out-and-back from Kildonnan to Bennan Head along the south of the island, which is totally tropical compared with the north thanks to the warming influence of the Gulf Stream. There are even palm trees! The stretch I walked is a gloriously easy two miles where you can seal-spot and admire Ailsa Craig, a triangular volcanic island that’s uninhabited by humans and instead governed by gannets and puffins.

Seals basking in the warmer waters of south Arran, west of Kildonnan, with Ailsa Craig in the background

I wish I’d not been so blasé and bothered to google the bloody Saddle. There’s enough information online about this notorious route! Because if I’d known, I’d almost certainly have gone another way and maybe made it round the island; I’d have been able to report back on the practicalities of the Arran Coastal Way, with notes on the wildlife and the island’s many geological wonders. But instead this report is a self-absorbed fable with an enduring (and obvious) moral for those, like me, who casually think they know it all: you can never be too prepared.