Ayr - with visitors!

Before moving to Ayr we saw the Google street view car which drove past with its 360degree camera on the roof, we’ll keep our eye on Google to see if we appear in the photo! Our first impression of Ayr is that it’s a nice seaside resort but a bit let down by the number of down and outs that seem so be scraping their knuckles around the streets! This proved to be pretty accurate during our stay..

We went into town on the first day, and after a wander around got some lunch from Greggs and sat on a bench to eat. It was a great place to watch the circus of Ayr’s locals, including a guy shouting and swearing at someone on his mobile phone and a lady who we swear was doing some very dodgy dealing! Later on, after Mum and Ian arrived we walked with the dogs to meet them at their hotel, on the way we back were accosted by a creature of the night who had just come out of the pub, dressed all in black with smeared eyeliner and a drunken sway she told us that she had a German Shepherd once and said something undecipherable about Prince! After that she staggered off down the street, looking for the next person to leer at!

The next day we parked up at the hotel and set off for a walk, first to the beach then along the promenade until we came to the harbour wall, we walked to the end where there was a fisherman watching his 2 rods which were doing nothing much at all, he hadn’t caught a thing. We spotted a range of birds out on the other harbour wall, the harbour is largely disused now, but there was a bit of industry going on over the other side, scrap metal, coal and even some huge wind turbine blades were sat on the side of the dock. We continued our walk and headed back to the hotel. Just by the hotel is an old church tower called St John’s Tower, the church is long gone and the tower is all that remains. Very well preserved it is one of Ayr’s oldest surviving buildings and dates back to 1300 and was even used as Scotland’s first parliamentary building at one stage.  

In the afternoon we set out for the Robert Burns memorial park, just outside Ayr. It is National Trust and includes Robert Burns’ birthplace, the Burns memorial and a large new museum. We started with the house in which he was born, a long thatched property which had room for cattle as well as a living room and a kitchen, it also has a well looked after garden that probably looks much better now than when Burns lived there! A little way down the road we went to the new Burns museum, which we found wasn’t open until December, but they had a café, so we sat outside and ordered paninis for lunch. A man came and told us off for having dogs on the premises, but we weren’t for moving as we’d ordered food so he let us be. After lunch we went into the memorial park where there are more gardens and a large memorial which you can go inside and up a set of stairs for a better view of the garden.

We also went to the medieval Brig ‘o Doon an old cart bridge which spans the river Doon and featured in one of Burns’ famous poems, as was the Alloway Auld Kirk, a tumbledown church just round the corner from the bridge which is also the burial ground of Burns’ parents. After all that history we decided it was time to head back to Ayr and go for a play on the beach, so we parked by the hotel and set off for the sand. The dogs had a great time, and even little Ben was running around like a spring chicken (he turned 16 this year, which is incredible for a little dog!). That evening we ate at an Indian restaurant, Linda had the inspired idea of asking a couple of local girls and they recommended The Kashmir just up the road. It turned out to be a great recommendation as we all had a lovely curry!

We were mildly hung over this morning, so postponed our meeting time to 10:30! Once we were sorted we picked up Mum and Ian and headed out for Culzean Castle. On the way there we had a stop at the phenomena called ‘Electric Brae’ it’s a short section of road on the A719 which has an optical illusion where the road appears to be going uphill, but is actually downhill. We weren’t really sure whether to believe it, but there was no traffic behind so I flicked on the hazards, stopped the car in the road and put it in neutral, we were all convinced that the car was facing downhill, but as I let the brakes off the car slowly started rolling backwards, seemingly being drawn up the hill! We were all very impressed, and we saw a couple of other cars doing the same thing while we were there.

Anyway, we soon decided to carry on and drove to the Culzean Castle car park. First we walked the dogs in the country park, ending up at a huge walled garden with an astonishing variety of different plants, including veg patches, flower gardens, vines, a huge rockery and even a floating hedge! On the way back to the car we met a lady on a huge horse called Robbie, so we stopped and had a chat with her for a bit. We then went over to the castle where we went inside and had a look around all the very grand public rooms, the entrance is an armoury with one of the biggest collections of pistols and swords in the UK all arranged in amazing patterns on the walls. The main oval staircase is also very striking and is the centrepiece of the castle.

We headed over to the old stables where there is a café so we had our lunch there before carrying on down to the gas factory. This is where the

gas was produced to be used for light and heat in the castle. Coal was heated until it gave off the gas which was then refined and piped up to the castle. We ended up at the visitor centre courtyard so we had a look around at what was there including a craft fayre. Linda was very taken with some glass necklaces and after the lady has explained how she made them she had to have one (or two!). We went back to the car and got the dogs out and took them for another walk this time ending up at the Swan Pond, there was a kiosk there so we all had ice cream. Back at the car we headed back to Ayr, with another brief stop at the electric brae to try freewheeling up the hill again!

The next day Mum and Ian came over to collect Ben for the journey home, we reluctantly gave them Ben back and waved them off. In the afternoon we went to homebase where we bought some builders foam filler, the shower tray in the ‘van had cracked again as it is unsupported, so we drilled a few holes in it and filled it with the hard setting foam, the joys of owning a written-off ‘van!. That evening we went over to visit Roy and Julie with the Airstream (we had previously seen the 'van at the Morvich site a few weeks ago), Linda met Julie the day before and said she’d always wanted to see inside an Airstream! We went in for a brew and a blather, they told us they had recently retired and were now thinking of touring Europe for the next few years! Roy is into his mountain biking and skiing, so we had plenty to talk about!