After an impressive 1 second PB at my ParkRun, I drove over to Livingston to collect Fiancee. Her husband to be was concerned about where we were going, which I thought was kind of cute, but as I wasn't really sure myself, I gave him a verbal list of tourist destinations in Ayrshire and we drove off.
The first stopping point was a picnic area and fishing lake in North Ayrshire. We pulled in quite quickly after our first glimpse of the Isle of Arran. I make no apologies for the amount of photos of that island in this blog. The mountains were unlike anything else I've seen in this country, they are unusually 'Spiky'.
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| Spiky mountains for you |
The next stop was Largs, for Nardini's "World Famous Icecream" which had actually been recommended to me by our company chairman and his wife. We were excited to see the sea, but like all seaside towns, Largs felt a bit hollow in the winter, We shivered on a bench on the promenade and ate our ice cream from little tubs (Kiwi and Daim Bar flavour for Fiancee, and Double Cream Vanilla and Butter Pecan for me, in case you wondered!) it was nice, but other than the range of flavours, it wasn't exceptional. The price was quite reasonable at just over £1 a scoop. We weren't allowed to eat it inside the shop.
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| The Ice cream parlour, on a deceptively sunny afternoon. |
We walked into the town centre to see if there was anything interesting there, but were very disappointed. We went into a Bakery/Cafe that I was excited to see hadn't yet been taken over by Greggs, so Fiancee could use the facilities. For this reason, I felt compelled to buy something from the bakery, but most of the shelves were empty. What remained was mostly savoury pies, so I ended up with a macaroon. It was deliciously sickly (so sugary it glued my teeth together) and overall I regretted purchasing it! We also went into a cute New Age shop full of dream-catchers and fairy statues, that had a popular sideline going in dog fancy dress! Although I was tempted to dress my parents' dog up as a rabbit, I refrained and we left awkwardly, as the shop was so small you felt compelled to make a purchase.
Our next stop, less than ten minutes drive away, was Kelburn Castle, a norman keep covered in awesome Brazillian street art! It also comprised an activity centre for kids basically - there was horse riding, a petting farm, various nature and history trails, and assorted grafitti covered buildings and teepees like a sort of youth club. The sun was getting low in the sky, but this place turned out to be an absolute gem of a discovery, despite the main tower being covered in scaffolding.
We had the place to ourselves, indeed, until we got to the castle, I was expecting to be approached by someone telling us it was closed! Approaching the tower involved walking through a beautiful glen featuring two waterfalls and hundreds of snowdrops! I took so many photos, Fiancée was very patient but I think I was pushing her limit!
With a quick pull over for a photo of the sun going down over Arran, we headed into Ayr where we parked up and found an independent and very cosy B&B to spend the night. Although the hosts were suprised to see the pair of us turning up out of the blue on their doorstep, they were very accommodating, and we had the last (lovely) room with a beautiful bathroom across the hall.
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| This photo looked awful on my camera, but now I'm glad I kept it |
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| The Daviot B&B, tucked in a cute side street just metres from the seafront |
In the morning, we had a quick walk down to the seafront, before heading into town (even less inspiring that Largs, if you were wondering!) and then it was back in the car, to Culzean country park for a very different sort of castle!
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| The Council hall at Ayr. Almost as impressive as Glasgow's! Note the pothole - this became a standing joke of the trip! |
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| I warned you about my photos of Arran! |
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| This little lady let me give her a head rub, she was so cute and fluffy! |
The deer were amazing to see, I hope their enclosure was big enough, because I have never seen so many deer spread out like this in one place before! I don't know why one doe was away from the rest of the herd, but she came over for attention, which was lovely. In the meantime, we saw the two stags locking antlers, which was cool! I think it was just play fighting, as they didn't fight for long and nobody was harmed.
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| If only I'd had a zoom lens! |
Next stop was the castle itself, impressively well maintained, but I believe it was just a holiday home, so it never saw any action fortunately. The castle is only open through summer, so we just took photos of the outside before exploring more of the parkland.
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| Culzean Castle itself |
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| Snowdrops along the clifftop walk |
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| We saw two swans, one male and one female, at the swan pond. There was also an epic childrens play area here! |
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| The cute tea shop and little toy shop! |
Next we drove up to East Ayrshire, specifically Kilmarnock, for lunch, and also to see the Dick Institute, which according to Trip Advisor is an excellent Public Art Gallery with free entry. Whilst the building was certainly very impressive from the outside, it was sadly closed on Sundays, so we hopped across the road for a delicious upmarket pub lunch at Franklin and Sloan, whose motto is "Cheers to Adventure!". It was a nice place.
After lunch we drove home, experiencing strange flurries of snowflakes despite the temperature being five degrees Celsius! We had a great adventure, with a lot of beautiful scenery, taking full advantage of the low season for Scottish beach tourism.
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