Scotland day 4 - Ayrshire

After our island hopping adventures. It;s back to Ayrshire, for some quieter touring. I;ve always through ayrshire was more the domain of old people having day trips in cars. Luke Skyetrekker is going to join us on a lazy trip around Ayrshire. For a change, we've decided to head south to Loch doon.





It;s nice to be somewhere a little different Luke knows it well, cos he's always down here fishing. It's not as high as the highlands or as dramatic as glencoe, but it's peacful and still, and nice for a drive.

From here, we swoop round to Culzean castle. It's the site of many a family or school or scout trip from our youths.

The admission desk want 40 pounds for us to enter, so we decide to drive down to use the student discount entrance, i.e. drive to the beach and walk in the back end of the castle grounds.

This also has the added bonus of letting us show The Cadet and Paprika the ayrshire coastline:







From here it's a nice relaxed country walk through the forrest to get to the castle. It's strange being somewhere that you knew well as a child, everything seems so much smaller now. We go the the swan pond. I remember a lake, but it turns out that its actually a pond.

We wander round, stopping a couple of times to chill and generally enjoy the peacefulness:



From here, it's not far to the actual castle:









It's more of a castle of the country house variety than one of the ruined historical landmark variety, but it's still nice to look around the grounds and admire the view out to sea. We wave at my parents who are on Arran, but the inconsiderate sods they are don't wave back.

Everything i closed, an it's slowly crawling into the evening, so we head back to the car and slowly make our way home back along the coast of Ayrshire... we get back in time to get some chinese and then have an early night ready to head to the airport to go home the next day......

Scotland day 3 - Mull and Iona

We wake up and cook a good old Scottish camping Breakfast:

On the ferry:






Torridon Castle:















Further round mull, we get to visit Dunvegan castle that wesaw from the ferry crossing. It looks much more the part than the country house, and I'm glad that Mowgli and I are wearing kilts:

















The weather's not as good as our earlier ferry crossing, but it just makes for more dramatic scenery:






The first relic we see on the island is a stone cross from the 12th century:



As you folow the road round, you come to the Nunnery. It's ruined, but immediattely gives you a sense of the age of this island:



Once we've walked round, we can see the abbey:



The facade of the main church is made up of pretty old bricks:



Inside, there are several room which are positioned around a really small main courtyard.. it's very cute and quaint:



Beside the abbey there's a museum, which contains some of the relics which are sensitive to the weather:

Scotland day 2: let's hit the road ....

As usual, the early start is not what it could be, and Paprika and I are beetling it to Glasgow at around 12pm.

We're picking up Mowgli and The Cadet outside the Barrowlands:







So Paprika gets to see the Barrowlands on a Saturday, a Glasgow experience that should not be missed.

When Mowgli comes out of his flat, he's already in his kilt. It's going to be a good weekend. We're heading off on the well trodden path towards Loch Lomond. We can't get our tape adapter to work with the laptop so we're tuneless for once. Instead we just have to take in the scenery:











The weather remains undecided when we get out at Inveruglas for more irn Bru and a few photos. I love taking people to Scotland for their first trip. You head up to Loch Lomond and they are awe struck, and I start to get really excited, cos I get to imagine their faces when they see Glencoe.

After a quick stop at Tyndrum, and the serenity and solitude of Rannoch moor, we see the familiar sight(well familiar to 3 of us) of Buchaille Etive Mor on our left. From the flatness of Rannoch moor it looks like a gateway....







We have some fun at Glencoe, flashing random cars in our kilts as we take photos at a view point... everything is so green compared to the snow covered peaks that Mowgli and I saw(climbed) in April.







This time we drive on past the Red Squirrel campsite that we were at last time. We've decided to head on round to Oban and see what we can find to do round there. Thats not before we stop at my grandmother's house in Appin. She's not in(She's down in Glasgow for my brother's graduations... remember), but we get to take some picturesque scenes of Castle Stalker and Loch Lhinnie in her absence.








It looks as amazing as always, and it's even more impressive to those who haven't seen it 1000 times before on family visits...

From here, we trundle on through the early evening light to Oban. we're going to go camping.....

We drive round and round Oban trying to find a campsite that will let us have a camp fire on the beach, we give up and make do with the campsite that has a view over the Loch:








Once we've set up camp, we head back to Oban in the car to get some supplies from Tesco. Following this, we treat Paprika to a traditional scottish dinner of Omega-3 oils wrapped in complex saturated fat molecules.... otherwise known as the "Fish Supper"



When we are sitting looking out to Mull and the islands from Oban High Street we realise just how large a fish supper this is. Several onlookers comment on the size of the fish compared to the size of Paprika....

After the fish supper we feed the rest to some extremely aggressive seagulls, who wolf it down as their regular evening meal.

We get back to camp and head down to a jettu on the Loch side for the second course. We bought cheese and wine in Tesco and we sit and let the sun go down as we slowly get chessily drunk:











we drift off with full bellies ready for more adventures in the morning.......