Qualla: Easdale https://qualla.com/easdale en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:24 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/5/b/easdale-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Easdale https://qualla.com/easdale Easdale: Introduction https://qualla.com/easdale/ Photo credit Blaeu, Public domain. Every September, several hundred people gather on a tiny island in the Firth of Lorn to throw flat stones across a flooded slate quarry. The rules are strict. The stone must skip at least three times. It must remain inside the marked quarry boundaries. The longest skim wins. The World Stone Skimming Championship has happened on Easdale every year since 1997, and it is the kind of event that small islands invent to give themselves a reason to exist when their original industries vanish. There are no cars on Easdale. No streetlights. The whole island measures less than a kilometre across. The stones are slate, broken from the quarries that once roofed half the world.

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Image: Blaeu | Public domain

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/5/b/easdale-wp/gf5b-easdale-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Easdale: Slates That Roofed the World https://qualla.com/easdale/ Photo credit Grahamcole, CC BY-SA 3.0. Easdale was once the centre of the Scottish slate industry. The quarries on this island and nearby Seil sent roofing slate across Britain and to Australia, the Americas, the West Indies. The industry peaked in the nineteenth century. Then on a night in November 1881, a great stor...

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Image: Grahamcole | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/5/b/easdale-wp/gf5b-easdale-slates-that-roofed-the-world.mp3 0:06 2 full Easdale: Listen Yonder https://qualla.com/easdale/ Photo credit Remi Mathis, CC BY-SA 3.0. The etymology of Easdale is genuinely unclear. In 1549 the cleric Donald Monro, Dean of the Isles, recorded the name as Eisdcalfe, in a phrasing whose meaning has been argued over ever since. The reference book Gaelic Place-Names of Scotland states the first element is obscure. H...

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Image: Remi Mathis | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/5/b/easdale-wp/gf5b-easdale-listen-yonder.mp3 0:06 3 full Easdale: Stamps and Stewardship https://qualla.com/easdale/ Photo credit Ian Taylor, CC BY-SA 2.0. Easdale is privately owned by Jonathan Feigenbaum, who runs the Easdale Island Company. He inherited the island from his father Clive Feigenbaum, former chairman of the philatelic firm Stanley Gibbons. The Feigenbaums have issued their own local Easdale stamps, a small enterprise...

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Image: Ian Taylor | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/5/b/easdale-wp/gf5b-easdale-stamps-and-stewardship.mp3 0:06 4 full Easdale: A Pyramid Roof and a Bridge That Wasn't https://qualla.com/easdale/ Photo credit Remi Mathis, CC BY-SA 3.0. The community hall on Easdale sits at the heart of island life. Its distinctive pyramid roof and arced frontispiece are visible from the short ferry crossing from Seil, the kind of building that makes a small community legible from a distance. The hall hosts concerts, weddings, t...

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Image: Remi Mathis | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/5/b/easdale-wp/gf5b-easdale-a-pyramid-roof-and-a-bridge-that-wasnt.mp3 0:06 5 full