Luing Day 1 – Part 1

First Morning in the Rain

Luing, in Argyll, in November 2023 was the destination for Brendan and my working week to gather material, me landscape and birds and for Brendan a source of inspiration for his paintings.

Our first day on Luing was spent within a mile or so either way from our cottage in Cullipool, the largest village by some distance on the island. Like alot of the villages in this small corner of Scotland it owes its existence to the quarrying of slate. Its peak years were in the 1800’s when the population here would have been as manny as 600.

There was more than enough to work with as we explored the quarries around the village and looked out towards the smallest of the Slate islands, Belnahua, which was large enough to support one quarry back in the day, all an isolated ruin now.

The last quarry on Luing ceased producing slate in 1965, a year after I first visited this part of Scotland, staying about 16 miles south of Oban. I remember going to Easdale, another of the Slate islands with my family, but by then all the quarries on this small island had seen their day.

All this quarrying has left its mark so potently on these islands that they are a living museum, a hugely scarred landscape and a society still trying to reinvent itself as both a viable community and one that is heavily reliant on tourists.

Redwings were passing through in good numbers throughout the day and Rock Pipits appeared from seemingly nowhere on the slate rich coast. We headed north from Cullipool in the morning to explore the quarries there, rich in colour, emphasised by the rain.

In the Sound of Luing a single Great-northern Diver drifted past, supporting a half way house plumage between summer and winter.

Colour abounded in the quarries, which became a feature of my work whilst on the island.

The rain was to continue for most of the first day but we were treated to the first of many beautiful sunsets over the next week and some wonderful early morning moonscapes. All in posts to follow!