Labyrinths

Touchstone Maze, Highland and Mossyard, Galloway

It was years since I’d seen a labyrinth – I think the last time was in Ely Cathedral – and then I happened to visit two in one month.
The first one was on a wooded hillside above the Victorian spa village of Strathpeffer and the second was on a tidal island on the Galloway coast.

On a rainy day with a thin mist hanging over the hills, Touchstone Maze looked as if it had been there since ancient times but it was actually constructed in 1995 as an art installation.
Although it’s called Touchstone Maze, it’s really a labyrinth as it has one path which leads through its five concentric circles until you reach the centre.

 The 81 large rocks come from quarries throughout the Highlands and Islands and showcase the wide variety of geology to be found across the north of Scotland. There’s ancient Lewisian gneiss from Stornoway,  Basalt from Mull, Sandstone from Orkney and Shetland as well as more local rocks from around the Cromarty and Beauly Firths.
Unfortunately the stones have weathered a lot since they were erected and now with weathering and lichen it’s difficult to make out what they are.

There’s an information board with a plan of the maze but with 81 stones, it’s very difficult to work out which is which! It’s a pity there isn’t a little plaque at each stone to tell you what rock type it is.

To get to the maze we did a circular walk up through Blackmuir Woods. As we gained height we would have had some great views across Strathpeffer and to the distant mountains, had it not been raining! However, on the way back we passed a house in the woods where someone had been extremely busy creating lots of sculptures of animals and people.  

From a rainy day in March to a glorious day in April and another labyrinth.  The setting couldn’t have been more different. This labyrinth is on a small tidal island at Mossyard, a few miles west of the attractive village of Gatehouse of Fleet.
It was made by the children of Mossyard in 1999 but restored during lockdown in 2020 and still looks very fresh and neat.

According to a plaque, it is a classical unicursal design and there is a similar one in the Isles of Scilly that was built by lighthouse keepers in 1729 and is still being walked to this day.

It always takes me longer than I expect to walk through a labyrinth, even a very small one like this where the centre looks so close!
It was interesting to notice, both here and at Touchstone, that some people (like me!) carefully follow the path to it’s conclusion while others wander more aimlessly among or across the stones. And there were those who just looked but didn’t walk!

Looking back to Mossyard from the island.

The rocky coastline on this stretch of the Galloway coast is interspersed with some beautiful sandy beaches and Mossyard is one of the quieter ones. Even on this first weekend of the Easter holidays we had the beach to ourselves most of the time.

 It’s just a pity there isn’t a South West coast path to join up all these beautiful places and to make access to the coast easier.

We left the island with the labyrinth and after a walk along the beach we took the path to the next beach. This was a smaller one with some impressive rocks and where we had our picnic, sitting on the sand.

We could have stayed there all day but decided to round off the day by going up the hill to the the café at Laggan. We went for their wonderful tea and cake but also for the view!

The view from Laggan with Ardwall Isle and Murray’s Isles lying at the entrance to Fleet Bay.