Ailsa Craig and why all curling stones come from Scotland

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 This is it. The winter Olympics have officially started! And what better way to celebrate than to talks about our local sport... Curling!!!

The little Scottish island you see in this photo is named Ailsa Craig and this is where all the curling stones used in the Olympics come from!

But how come we ended up going more than 16km away from the west coast of Scotland to this litteral rock in the middle of the ocean to get some stone for the sport?

Well first things first, the sport was invented in the Highlands!

Curling seems to have started out as a fun Scottish pastime of throwing stones over ice, played on frozen lochs and ponds in the medieval period (the oldest curling stone dates back to 1511!). The curling craze quickly took over the country. To the point that our national poet, Robert Burns, even wrote those lines in 1785:

**The sun had clos’d the winter day,

The Curlers quat their roaring play…** ("roaring play" because... well, have you ever heard two stones hitting each other at high speed?)

During a visit to Scone Palace near Perth in 1842, Queen Victoria even watched a demonstration of the game by the Earl of Mansfield (albeit on his polished ballroom floor instead of on proper ice). After trying her hand at it, the queen liked the game so much that in 1843 she gave permission for the local club's name to be changed to the Royal Caledonian Curling Club [RCCC]. Talk about a royal seal of approval!

Unfortunately for those who don't own a polished wood ballroom at home, you were quite restricted to only playing curling in winter, when you local pond would hopefully freeze over. Fortunately, by the 20th century, technology came to the recure. The first indoor curling rink in Scotland – Crossmyloof in Glasgow – opened in 1907, followed by rinks in Aberdeen and Edinburgh in 1912.

As the end of the 19th century saw an increased national (and soon International) passion for curling grow, people started looking for the perfect stone to compete. And this is what brings us to Ailsa Craig!

The microgranite found on the island is quite special: it has some Riebeckite in it, which gives it the ability not to crack when stones collide at very low temperature.

Nowadays around 70% of ALL stones used in curling come from our little island at the corner of the world.

This also explains why a single set of 12 curling stone can run you around £12000 by the way! 😉

The gentlemen you can see in the photo are Willie Jackson, Robin Welsh, Tom Murray and Laurence Jackson were the GB team in 1924 in Chamonix at the 'Semaine Internationale des Sports d'Hiver' (International Winter Sports Week) winning gold 🇬🇧🥌🥇

The photo of Ailsa Craig is from Billy McCrorie, the photo of the granite is from Jonathan Wilkins and both are part of the amazing geograph project 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🗺️