Qualla: Ailsa Craig https://qualla.com/ailsa-craig en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:16 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Ailsa Craig https://qualla.com/ailsa-craig Ailsa Craig: Introduction https://qualla.com/ailsa-craig/ Every curling stone thrown at the Winter Olympics begins life on this island. Ailsa Craig sits alone in the outer Firth of Clyde, west of mainland Scotland — a near-perfect dome of granite rising from the sea, ten miles off Girvan. The microgranite that makes up the island is among the rarest stones in commercial use anywhere. Two varieties matter for curling: 'Blue Hone', whose extremely low water absorption keeps the freezing surface of an ice rink from eroding it, and 'Common Green', which forms the body of the stone. Together they have given Ailsa Craig a strange position in world sport: this uninhabited Scottish island is, with the Trefor quarry in Wales, one of only two sources of all curling stones used in the game.

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]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/u/6/ailsa-craig-wp/gcu6-ailsa-craig-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Ailsa Craig: Paddy's Milestone https://qualla.com/ailsa-craig/ The island has carried several names. In Gaelic it has been called Creag Ealasaid — Elizabeth's rock — though scholars consider this a folk etymology overlying a much older and less transparent root, possibly meaning 'cliff of the Saxons'. To Irish labourers travelling between Be...

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]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/u/6/ailsa-craig-wp/gcu6-ailsa-craig-paddys-milestone.mp3 0:06 2 full Ailsa Craig: The Granite the World Uses https://qualla.com/ailsa-craig/ The island is the remains of a magmatic pluton — a body of igneous rock formed deep underground, exposed by the slow erosion of softer material around it. It was part of the same period of igneous activity that produced the granites of nearby Arran. Ailsa Craig microgranite occur...

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]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/u/6/ailsa-craig-wp/gcu6-ailsa-craig-the-granite-the-world-uses.mp3 0:06 3 full Ailsa Craig: A Catholic Refuge and a Spanish Plot https://qualla.com/ailsa-craig/ In the late 16th century, during the upheaval of the Scottish Reformation, Ailsa Craig became a refuge for Catholics who had no safer place to practise their faith. In about 1587, the prominent Catholic Lord Maxwell landed on the island while escaping his pursuers, found a fishin...

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]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/u/6/ailsa-craig-wp/gcu6-ailsa-craig-a-catholic-refuge-and-a-spanish-plot.mp3 0:06 4 full Ailsa Craig: The Lighthouse and the Foghorns https://qualla.com/ailsa-craig/ The Ailsa Craig Lighthouse was built between 1883 and 1886 by Thomas and David Alan Stevenson — of the Stevenson lighthouse engineering dynasty; Thomas's son Robert Louis would become the famous novelist. It stands on the east coast facing the Scottish mainland, owned by the Nort...

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]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/u/6/ailsa-craig-wp/gcu6-ailsa-craig-the-lighthouse-and-the-foghorns.mp3 0:06 5 full Ailsa Craig: Birds and the Long Rat War https://qualla.com/ailsa-craig/ Ailsa Craig is today a bird sanctuary, leased by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds until 2050. A large colony of gannets nests on its cliffs, the same birds that — in the days of Robert Burns, whose maternal uncle Samuel Burns was involved in the trade — were hunted a...

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]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/u/6/ailsa-craig-wp/gcu6-ailsa-craig-birds-and-the-long-rat-war.mp3 0:06 6 full