Dome-shaped granite island, curling-stone source.
Some 10 miles off Girvan, Ailsa Craig rises from the Firth of Clyde as a single dome of granite, visible from much of the Ayrshire coast, Arran and Kintyre, and known too as Paddy’s Milestone, close to the halfway point of the sea crossing between the Clyde and Belfast. Its hard, fine-grained granite is the source of nearly all the world’s curling stones, quarried under licence by a Mauchline firm, Kays of Scotland, in occasional harvests rather than continuous mining. The island is owned by the Marquess of Ailsa and leased to the RSPB as a bird reserve; tens of thousands of pairs of gannets nest on its cliffs alongside guillemots and kittiwakes, and puffins have been breeding again since rats were cleared from the island in 1991. Boat trips run from Girvan, though landing is only possible around high tide and depends on the weather. A lighthouse at the eastern jetty, built by the Stevenson family of engineers in the 1880s, was automated in 1990 and now runs on solar power.
