The Picturesque Village of Corrie

Continuing from yesterday’s blog, let’s take a circular tour of the Isle of Arran. We’ve already seen some of the points of interest in Brodick, so we will travel approximately six miles north to the tiny picturesque village of Corrie.

Corrie boasts the unusual feature of having two harbours (half a mile apart.) The more northerly of Corrie's two harbours is often called Corrie Port and was the stopping off point of the steamers that, from the mid 1800s, linked many of Arran's coastal villages with a wider network of Clyde ports. Today, Corrie Port is home to a couple of small boats and to a replica Viking longboat in regular use by the Arran Viking Society. Historically, the harbour here was also associated with the export of limestone quarried from caves in the hillside above.

The more southerly of Corrie's two harbours is known as Sandstone Quay, and was where the sandstone dug from a nearby quarry was loaded onto puffers for shipment to the mainland. Today it is the largest and best used of the harbours along this stretch of coastline. The pier at Sannox was also built to allow mineral extraction.

Corrie is approximately half way between Brodick and Lochranza. But if you take the time to look, you begin to appreciate a village which has made the most of a beautiful coastal location. It also helps to look out for some of the detail, like the sculpture of a seal on a rock below the high tide mark near the Corrie Hotel, which was carved by the local sculptor Marvin Elliott, (by the way, the seagull is real!),

and the unusual bollards found at Sannox Pier and Sandstone Quay shaped - and painted - to resemble sheep

There is also a foot path leading from Corrie to Goatfell, the highest of Arran's mountains.