Deer, red squirrels, eagles, otters, and seals can all be seen on and around the Isle of Arran, as Robin McKelvie and his children discover
Will we see all the Big Five daddy?”, asks my youngest as we roll off the ferry under the brooding hulk of Arran’s hills. We’re here for a week, so I’m cautiously optimistic, with Arran the only isle to boast red deer, otters, red squirrels, golden eagles, and harbour seals. It doesn’t end there, with sea eagles, basking sharks and even whales – not to mention Scotland’s first all-island snorkel trail – thriving around Scotland’s wildlife isle.
Scotland’s seventh largest island, and the largest island in the Firth of Clyde, is often eulogised as ‘Scotland in Miniature’, which metaphorically it certainly is.
The Highland Boundary Fault sears right through Arran’s heart, gnarling the north into a wildscape of soaring mountains, tumbling glens, and gushing burns. The south is gentler: rolling hills, thick forests and spirit-soaring stretches of sand. Arran sports a brace of whisky distilleries and breweries (gin too), castles, stone circles, and its own Highland Games: it’s the nation in microcosm.
Scotland in miniature’s wildlife is writ large too, the whole island hailed and protected as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Just a few minutes after leaving the ferry we shake off the island’s largest village of Brodick in search of one of Scotland’s few red squirrel hides.
Arran is the only isle in Scotland with a red squirrel population, thanks to the absence of invasive greys. We don’t even make it to the hide. We must slow to let one of these gorgeously bushy tailed charmers amble across the road. Then another. Both my daughters yelp. Minutes later in the hide we have to be deadly quiet, though. We’re rewarded as a trio of squirrels break cover in the thick forest to grab a snack right in front of us.
We try to push north, but around the next bay we’re stopped by a colony of seals, another of the Big Five. A dozen seals have dragged themselves up on to the rocks by the road at Merkland Point to bask in the sun’s rays.
A local man cycling pauses to see why we’ve stopped. Then he just smiles and continues when he realises it’s ‘only’ seals. On Arran day-to-day interactions with wildlife are the glorious norm, not the exception.
Easing across the Highland Boundary Fault the land rises and the big hills unfurl like a cinema curtain pulling back. Pure, glorious technicolour nature.
It feels like a David Attenborough BBC documentary as we scan for wildlife.
Craggy Alpine-sharp peaks and ridg
