![]() ![]() Although the event is intended first and foremost to be fun – with a big knees-up in the community centre the night before – there are proper rules and regulations and referees and everything, with a trophy for the winner of each category. The contest, which is open to all comers, takes place in one of the flooded quarries every September. ![]() What little fame Easdale has today is down to its hosting of the World Stone Skimming Championships (). The sea has turned the quarries into lagoons, while long grasses, wild fuchsia and blackthorn have covered what the sea cannot penetrate. These have an otherworldly feel to them, as if formed by a giant poking his rough fingers deep into the island from above in a misguided mission to supply its inhabitants with swimming pools. Meanwhile, a wander around the outside of the island, over its millions of shards of slate, takes in all half dozen or so flooded quarries. Towards the middle of the isle stands a flat-topped hillock, its flanks torn off to reveal dark cliffs. Whitewashed one-storey cottages of far greater vintage arrange themselves in rather haphazard lines around the inlet that serves as a harbour. With no roads and no cars, anything that needs ferrying about on the grassy footpaths is taken in a wheelbarrow, so this is the island's equivalent of a car park. On a small patch of grass by the harbour a battalion of them lie upside down. Today, the first thing you notice as you get off the little boat that carries you over in a blink from Ellenabeich is wheelbarrows. ![]()
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