Looking down from on high, the drone’s eye view is unflinchingly spare.
Far below is a tiny enclave of brightly painted homes, their perfectly aligned slate roofs glinting in the hot spring sunshine as they cling together against the vast expanse of notably undeveloped scrubland beyond.
Each house is chocolate box pretty, the palette of styles moves from Georgian townhouse to crofters’ cottages, making the whole tricky to date.
Down at street level, by a road connecting two former mining communities in Ayrshire, the task is made easier by a foundation stone unveiled in May 2011 by the then Prince of Wales.
This, then, is Knockroon – Charles’s fabled vision of an ‘eco-village’ filled with sustainable homes built from stone using traditional arts and crafts.
