Читать книгу The Ayrshire and Arran Coastal Paths онлайн

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Again, like the Ayrshire mainland, people have left their mark on Arran for more than 5000 years. The wonderfully bleak Machrie Moor, with its amazing stone circles, is just one spot on the island that contains evidence of human activity from that time. Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age sites have all been excavated.

After Viking rule ended things became very complicated, especially when Scotland's King Alexander III died in 1286, leaving no immediate heir (the nearest descendant was his four-year old granddaughter Margaret, the ‘Maid of Norway’, so named for being the child of King Eric II of Norway and Alexander III's daughter, Margaret). Things were complicated even further by the Maid of Norway's death in the Orkney Islands in 1290, which occurred during her crossing of the North Sea to be crowned Queen of Scotland. Over the next 20 years or so Scotland's claimants to the vacant throne were plunged into a variety of feuds. One such rivalry eventually led to the 1306 murder of John Comyn (known as ‘The Red’ Comyn) in Dumfries by his then competitor for the crown Robert the Bruce. This was an infamous event in Scottish history, having occurred at the altar of the town's Greyfriars church.