The three Dafereras brothers can’t remember how they learned to throw stones. Niko, Harry and Ross are all annual competitors in the World Stone Skimming Championship on Easdale Island in Argyll, Scotland. ‘I reckon I just picked one up and started throwing,’ says Harry. But Niko reckons they had help. ‘Dad taught us to throw. On Paros, looking at Antiparos.’ We are by a bonfire in the rain on the eve of the championship. It is dark and stormy without a star in the sky, and I can barely see their faces for wood smoke. Different conditions, then, to summer on the Aegean. I ask Niko if he ever hit Antiparos. ‘You can’t hit Antiparos,’ he says seriously.

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Niko is a fisherman and razor-clam diver who spends most of his time on fishing boats around the Hebrides. When on land, he lives in a caravan in coastal Argyll where people have come from far and wide to camp out before the championship. I have never seen so many pick-up trucks in one field. Dolly Parton’s a week gone and whisky’s being passed around to the strains of Wild Flowers. By midnight, the hopeful champions have turned in.

The next morning, the sky is improbably blue. This summer’s drought is a distant rumour in Argyll and, after months of rain, the land is green and full. Fat blackberries wait within the briars. We get off lightly with a 40-minute drive to the ferry port, compared with others who have flown over from as far as New Zealand, Argentina, Jamaica and India. But as we approach the ferry port, a line of cars has slowed to a crawl. Men in high-vis jackets patrol up and down doing ominous head-shaking. Easdale is normally home to 70 inhabitants, but the organisers are expecting more than 3,000 competitors and spectators this weekend. Drivers are getting creative, ditching cars where they can and skedaddling before they can be asked to move.

Stones are thrown in a former slate mine which was flooded by a ferocious Atlantic storm in 1881, creating a circular arena for the tournament. Easdale isn’t won by the number of skims; it’s about distance. If entrants are able to hit the back wall – achieving the coveted, echoing thunk against the slate cliff – they are entered into the final toss-off where the best tossers go head-to-head. Last year, 14 made it to the final.

The tossmaster and committee organiser is one Dr Kyle Mathews. He lives on Easdale and is the local GP. ‘You do it for the drama of the toss-off. That tension, those stakes. You just feel it.’

Competitors get three throws across the 63-metre stretch, which is marked off like a........

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