Of Katie Gray, David Boran and the delights of Hippy Wood

October 15, 2024, 5:37 am , by Richard Lutz

RICHARD LUTZ wanders north as autumn fades

Winter holds its breath. There’s a gap right now, a gap between a fading October and the sting of cold nights.

But still there’s a hint of a sharp southwest wind coming in from Ireland. The sea surges over the harbour wall and hardcore whitecaps keep the sea rumbled and angry.

Gone is the green Ayrshire bracken, it’s now tawny:

On the coast, there’s a late display from headland hawthorn:

Burdock, once purple and clingy, is now fading:

Brambles, devoured in pies or crumbles, are dying back as they line a seaside lane in the village of Dunure. It’s a harbour hamlet once cuddled in obscurity but presently a tourist target after the tv show Outlander used it for locations. So goes the fickle fortune of modern fame.

But if colours fade, stories endure. South of Dunure is a particularly serene section of the Ayrshire coastal trail that roams 100 miles up the Scottish coast. Here there’s loads of places to stop and peer west to the sea, some decorated by myth. Such as Katie Gray’s Rocks:

It’s a Neolithic site buried under grass, stone and lost memory. It’s probably about 4000 years old and the folks back then really did pick a nice plot to live by the ocean, gather molluscs and fish, graze goats, maybe set up an early online Airbandb operation with ‘gorgeous sea views just right for Iron Age fun and family.’

I’m with Angus, a local farmer, who says no one knows why this historic patch of earth is called Kathy Gray’s Rocks. But that’s its name- even on the authoritive Ordnance Survey maps which pinpoint every hill, rill, bump and wart on the UK’s face. One myth is that our mysterious Katie used to have a humble home amid the crags and ancient ruins. Another is she’s a Dunure woman wrapped in a thousand fireside tales of romance and mystery.

Angus points to a steep pasture dipping to the sea. It was here that a Nazi plane crashed after a bombing run over the Glasgow shipyards to the north. Nearby farmers, ‘armed with pitchforks’, arrested the surviving crew and marched them off to prison. There’s no hint now of the 80 year old year old crash, just the green grass of a tidy field.

Northwards up the coast is David Boran’s Loup- a seaside gorge anchored in old fables:

It seems old Davey leaped (‘louped’ in Scots dialect) over the deep rocky crevice to escape the Excise man after a smuggling run. There’s a wide variance to the tale; some say DB was fleeing from the Excise, others say he was fleeing from his Ex-wife. Either way, the tale stands: Davey Boran’s Loup is clearly shown on my map, just below Drumshang Farm and the line of a dismantled railway. It’s just south of The Hippie Woods:

It’s a small copse of oak, birch and ash that lines the old mill stream. It seems every summer, a group of wanderers would meet to celebrate an ancient fertility rite called The Beltane. They’d gather near where a holly and a rowan tree intimately entwine on a tiny knoll. They’d party, salute the fertility festival in (ahem…) distinctive style, dance around a fire and then leave the next morning having thoroughly cleaned up the site of their outdoor pursuits. They were always welcome, says my sylvan source, as they were very tidy fertility celebrants.

As yet, The Hippy Woods hasn’t made it onto the highly regarded Ordnance Survey map. I think its scrupulous cartographers update their work regularly… maybe next edition will include this topographical gem that they somehow missed. It can then join other neighbouring sites with tales to tell such as Mount Freedom, Dead Knoll, Electric Brae, The Fairy Well and, my favourite, the delightfully named Eggnock Ridge.