Scotland's offbeat world championship of stone skimming

Not all rock stars play guitars: every September, the Hebridean island of Easdale plays host to the world's most fanatical stone skimmers.

It was pouring, hard and heavy. The rain was falling like marbles, the wind was whirling and the air was thick with the reek of whisky. At the heart of this scene was Lynsay McGeachy, competitive amateur golfer, mountain biker and head gin distiller at Beinn an Tuirc in Kintyre, and she was the image of cool as she prepared to take centre stage.

The mood was electric, like a rock concert, with the gathered crowd heckling support. But McGeachy was not listening, nor preparing to tee-off, mountain bike or take part in any other everyday sport. She was about to skim a stone, feeling its cold hard edges on her fingertips, clinging to it with competitive seriousness. 

Seconds later, following a waist-high baseball-style pitch, the flat-bottomed slate pebble spun 42m across the waterlogged quarry in front of her, hovering and zinging through the air as if a drunken dragonfly. It twirled into the air 15 times. In her own words, it was an "absolute belter".

"I'm struggling to find stones to train with this year because I've thrown so many away," said McGeachy, who estimates she skims some 160 rocks each week during her practice sessions on Torrisdale Beach in Kintyre, a peninsula on Scotland's south-west coast. For her, stone skimming is more of a calling than a career. "I've skimmed ever since I was a child. The key is to find smooth pebbles with a level underside. They spin so much faster."

A show-off demonstration of almost superhuman wrist skills, competitive stone skimming is a sport so unusual it can give spectators tingly fingers just watching. This time last year, McGeachy's 42m throw was enough to see her crowned overall adult female champion at the World Stone Skimming Championships on Easdale Island near Oban in Argyll, and it is where one of the world's strangest sports has been competed nearly every September since 1997.

Taking place at one of Easdale's amphitheatre-shaped flooded quarries, the championship is a low-key if unorthodox get-together organised by some of the island's 60 residents, including the pub landlord, ferryman and the island’s one doctor. What's more, the event is intercut with local rivalries and beery good humour, and it is a place where anyone can join in for the £10 entry fee. There's just one pub, one community hall and one museum that tells the story of the quarriers who first populated the island, yet enough wild topography for everyone.

What's also remarkable is the island's inaccessibility – it's in the middle of the Slate Islands in the Firth of Lorn – and its inescapable beauty, which leaves visitors with the impression that man and nature came to an understanding long ago and stuck to it. Reverence for slate runs deep here and the interaction between the stone and those who live on Easdale is in their DNA.

"There's so much pride and positivity on Easdale because of stone skimming," said community doctor Kyle Mathews, originally from Portadown, Northern Ireland, who now acts as head judge, host and co-organiser of the championships. "The quarry isn't locked up like Centre Court at Wimbledon. So, it brings people to the island all year round."

This year's finals take place across the weekend of 7 September, and the challenge for organisers is the limited infrastructure and accommodation to cater for the 1,000 curious spectators who turn up. Event entry is also capped at 350 skimmers, despite the tournament's popularity. In fact, this month's contest sold out in 29 minutes and demand was such from the 700 hopefuls that the event website crashed.

Over the weekend, Mathews' duties are to marshall the event from the "Skim of Destiny", the platform from which throwers hurl their stones across the half-drowned quarry, and referee any disputed results. All skimmers must compete with rocks made from naturally formed Easdale slate and be no more than 7.6cm in diameter, with each stone fitting into a carefully selected measuring gauge to make sure no one has an unfair advantage.

Yet there is no doubt that this sport is thrilling. Last year, eight-time champion and Scottish fan favourite Dougie Isaacs hit the back wall of the competition quarry with such force that there was sheer bedlam. "There were air horns going off and the cheer from the crowd was so loud it was heard on the neighbouring island of Seil," recalled Mathews. "That's a hard atmosphere to bottle."

Like a bad joke, the story goes that the idea for the tournament originated around 40 years ago, beginning with an Englishman, Scotsman and Irishman walking into a bar – in this case, the island's only pub, The Puffer. It ended after far too much drink and a skimming competition that finished just before sunrise.

Those of a more skeptical nature might suggest the idea should never have left the pub. But the point is still to bring the island together, and the driving force behind it remains Eilean Eisdeal, a community development group. As a charity fundraiser, last year's event raised £9,000 for the school and community hall – and the motivation is help safeguard the island's future.

Once prosperous due to its reputation for slate cut from its seven quarries for the global housing industry, Easdale's primary trade fell into abrupt decline in the 1850s after a historic storm flooded the pits. Today, the smooth stones left behind are full of meaning, yet only used for competitive skimming. The last slate was cut in 1950. 

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This history is told at the Easdale Island Folk Museum, providing a melancholic counterpoint to today's upbeat skimming training regimes. Routinely, shoulders and wrists are stretched, hips are twisted in yoga -like moves and fingers twanged as if elastic bands. Injuries are rife, too, says six-time entrant Alex Lewis, a previous winner of multiple stone skimming contests, including the British, Welsh, All England and Swiss Stone Skimming Championships.

"Most days, I train to make sure I don't get injured when competing," explained the Stirling-based economics student, while describing his daily ritual. Wrist and shoulders are exercised, he said, plus flexibility conditioning is vital to ensure throws of more than 100m on a consistent basis without torn ligaments or muscles. "Cortisone injections are all too commonplace these days, sadly."

Looming large in Lewis's mind is last year's Welsh Open, when the former competitive javelin thrower tossed an unofficial world record distance of 147.7m – twice the length of the Easdale quarry – with his stone jumping around 50-60 times. Frustratingly, he's still awaiting confirmation from Guinness World Records.

"I'm certainly driven to achieve more, but I also find this sport immensely therapeutic, and I do it because I love it," Lewis explained. "As strange as it may sound, this is a great community to be part of… we thrive on talking about how rocks interact with water. Which, of course, is weird to many people."

To land the longest throw in a competition is no easy feat for any sportsperson. But in stone skimming, particularly on Argyll's tempestuous Atlantic coast, there is always the weather to contend with and the wind's effect on the quarry water. In calm conditions on Easdale, a three-toss performance could equally result in one stone curving wildly out of the marked course, with urgent waves chasing it.

"It might be the perfect stone and perfect throw, but then a rogue swell spins your attempt off-course," said Lewis. "So, a lot is down to luck. Anyone can win."

That anyone from anywhere in the world can take part regardless of ability, age, or experience, and go on to glory is all part of Easdale's exhilarating appeal. But so, too, is the beautiful complexity of its geography.

Here, the saying goes, no stone is left unturned.

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