The String Road, which rises to 233m (768 feet), climbs up Gleann an t-Suidhe connecting Brodick on the East with Blackwaterfoot on the West coast. 

This lonely mountain road was the creation of civil engineer Thomas Telford who surveyed the area in 1817.  Famed for the ingenuity of his canal, road, and infrastructure projects it is perhaps unsurprising that he was amusingly known as 'The Colossus of Roads'.

At the highest point of the road, views of the jagged peaks of Goatfell, Ben Nuiss and Ben Tarsuinn dominate the skyline.

It was this mountain landscape which first attracted the photographer John Muir Wood (1805 - 1902), regarded as one of the earliest photographers to make an extensive body of work of the Scottish landscape.  Muir Wood was also a talented musician, piano maker and publisher, and notably brought the composer Frédéric Chopin to Scotland in 1848. 

Using the calotype process, Muir Wood travelled across the country in the early 1840s. His views of Arran, which also record some of the earliest images taken from mountain tops, also provide an invaluable record of life on the island from this time. 

A true innovative pioneer of photography, he left behind some 900 images, a huge collection for the time. This extensive archive can be found today in the National Galleries of Scotland.