The first indoor meeting of the year for the Arran Natural History Society took place last week in the rangers centre in Brodick Country Park, where Tom Byars gave an illustrated presentation entitled Dynamite in the dunes: a natural history of the Ardeer Peninsula.
The Ardeer Peninsula in Stevenston, just across the water from Arran, with its extensive dune system, was chosen by Alfred Nobel in 1871 to site the largest explosive factory in the world.
It was later taken over by ICI and, at its peak, the site employed almost 13,000 workers in this fairly remote location and had its own railway station. The station was used solely for workers and those special visitors with business in the ICI plant, and was never a regular passenger stop. Until the mid-1960s, there were two trains per day to transport workers. Although the line no longer exists, the abandoned platform remains, hidden beneath dense undergrowth.