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......