Knockdolian rises abruptly out of the Stinchar valley a mile below Colmonell — 869 feet of hill, so regular and conical in shape that it looks deliberately made.
The false Craig
That shape is the reason for its name. Seen from the sea in poor light, Knockdolian looks so much like Ailsa Craig that sailors bound up the Firth of Clyde mistook one for the other and steered by it — with the small difficulty that Ailsa Craig sits in open water and Knockdolian is a mile inland behind a shoreline. Ships were lost on that error, and the hill has been called the false Craig for centuries.
It is a good thing to look for as you drive the coast: from the right angle on the A77 the resemblance is genuinely startling.
The mermaid of Knockdolian
The story attached to the old castle at the foot of the hill is one of the better Ayrshire legends. A mermaid used to come up the Stinchar and sit on a black rock by the castle at night, singing. The lady of the house had a baby who would not sleep, and she blamed the singing — so she had the rock broken up.
The mermaid returned, found her rock gone, and sang instead a curse: that the lady might have her sons, but they would not inherit; that the house would fall and the family fail. The heir died soon afterwards, and the line at Knockdolian came to an end.
It is worth noting that stories of this kind — a household offending a water spirit and being cursed — are common across Scotland and Scandinavia. The rock is still pointed out.
Climbing it
There is no waymarked path and no car park. The hill is farmland, so any ascent is under the Scottish Outdoor Access Code: park considerately without blocking gates or passing places, avoid fields with livestock and young stock in particular, close gates behind you, and keep dogs on leads.
It is a short climb but a genuinely steep one, on grass and bracken with no constructed path. In return you get one of the great small views in the south-west — the whole Stinchar valley inland, Ballantrae and the sea to the west, Ailsa Craig offshore and Arran beyond it.
Allow an hour or so, wear boots, and pick a clear day: in low cloud there is nothing to see and no path to follow.
