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......

Roadtrippin

......so it's up early for another squeeze into the beetle. We're heading off towards Lanark. This involves heading out across the Ayrshire wilderness through Muirkirk and then on to Lanark.

It's good to be out on these roads again. They are very rugged and twisty and it's probably almost ten years since I've been along them. Muirkirk was a feeder school for my high school to o memories of various faces that we went to school with are discussed between me and Luke SkyeTrekker.

After a lot of Twisting..... A fair bit of Michael jackson(Mowgli and Luke should never have been put together).... and some decidedly green faces..... we stop off in Lanark.



I'm really proud, cos when I ask what everyone wants from Woolworths, The Cadet asks for Irn Bru with a look of physical addiction similar to that of an Argyll Street junkie. I'm proud that she's moved from thinking it was horribly sugary a mere week ago to full physical addiction with ginger glints in her eyes:



Everybody gets refreshed and we decide to head along to New Lanark. Wikipedia has this to say:

New Lanark is a village on the River Clyde, approximately two kilometres from the Scottish town of Lanark. It was founded in 1786 by David Dale, who built cotton mills and housing for the mill workers. Dale built the mills there to take advantage of the water power provided by the River Clyde. Under the ownership of a partnership that included Dale's son-in-law, Robert Owen, a philanthropist and social reformer, New Lanark became a successful business and an epitome of utopian socialism.
The New Lanark mills operated until 1968. After a period of decline, the New Lanark Conservation Trust was founded in 1975 to prevent demolition of the village. As of 2006, most of the buildings have been restored and the village has become a major tourist attraction. It is one of four UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Scotland.

That's what wikipedia says. What the three former Scottish kids say is that we used to come here on school trips, so for two of them it's a bit of a nostalgia trip. For Luke, who's mother is a school teacher, he's here every other summer and could give tours:




There's a multimedia tour and various things inside, but we are just going to have a wander around the country paths which surround the mill.

Before that, we head into the traditional sweet shop where you can stock up on all the boiled sweets that we used to eat when we were kids. The prices have elevated a little and a quarter ounce doesn't last as long as it used to.... but we get:

Clove Rock:

Lemon Sherbets:


Soor Plooms:


and for the country walk..... Winter Warmers:


I think The Cadet is a little perplexed as to how excited we get at the prospect of a wee paper bag of boiled sugar.... but then she tastes a Lemon Sherbet and she's converted..

The next step in the Luke SkyeTrekker tour of New Lanark i the gift shop to get 10p polystyrene gliders. I can kind of tell that when he come here with school children he has to pretend to be mature and subdued, but he can pretty much let rip with us..... So ten minutes after coming out of the shop, there is a group of people watching four grown adults run around making aeroplane noise and throwing flimsy polystyrene in the air:



Inevitably someone's(Mowgli) plane goes in the river and he's determined that the same happens to everyone elses. I blame it on the sugar in the clove rock.

From here we continue un the side of the clyde to the country walk. The waterfallls are pretty magnificant and Luke has brought a digital SLR and a video camera so that we can get artistic.
I don't have our artistic results, so you'll have to make do with 3 megapixels worth of Canon:





From hear we head off back to the car... I'm keen to get up a mountain, and there is a small hill in one of my walking books called tinto hill:



After peeing in Biggar, we stock up on some food and water from a petrol station. We arrive at the car park at the foot of Tinto hill. I am trying to instill some enthusiasm in climbing the mountain. It's a far stretch from the beauty of glencoe, and is basically just a peaty path up to a high point, surrounded by rolling hills etc. There's little promise of seeing anything we can't hear from here. The opinions of climbing are as follows:

Mowgli: Would prefer something more extreme
Luke: Avoiding climbing at any cost
Me: I live in the flattest country in the world
The Cadet: Having just discovered a Kaleidoscope - normal service will be resumed around february.



We head off with Tripod in hand and walk for about 30 minutes..... It's now clear to me that no one wants to continue - even The Cadet is complaining that the scenery isn't up to much, so I decide that rather than force them up the hill, we'll head back down and continue driving. We get some photos, and walk down slowly.....

I quite like the light and the hills, but it is almost definitely cos I live in Holland:









I try to explain it to The Cadet by talking about Constable paintings with the light hitting the clouds etc....



This then continues onto Turner, and how his mess of layers in his paintings resemble a smashing pumpkins guitar solo coming out of a wall of screeching sound:



Since we're in creative mood, we then bang a broken wire fence against its post so that it makes cool noises. We follow this up by finding the half way point and playing harmonics on it..... Ah the joys of education.....

We're back on the road and the night starts to falll as we head out towards Edinburgh, mainly just because it's too early to return to Glasgow. We stop on the way to admire the sky as the sun sets:


Once we've failled to find beaches or views in both Musselbourgh and Portabello, we head off to Leith docks and get fish and chips:



We then sit at Leith docks and eat them. It's a good end to a long day...



From here we head off back to glasgow to the strains of Bad:

From here, it's back to Partick to watch Almost famous with the Similarski sisters:



It's one of my favourtie friends as it reminds me of being a 12 year old Led Zeppelin fan trying to be cool and be an adult. It has a kick ass soundtrack aided by the wailing of one Mr. Mike McCready which also adds to it's rating in my book:



From here, it's back down to Ayrshire, where I have a quick beer and then head off to bed....... knackered......

Wasted days

The first of January is such a wasted day its unbelievable. As always I wake up far too early(about 12.30pm). There's no chance Mowgli is greeting 2006 yet, so I know I can vegetate in front of dvd's for a few hours. It's the first of January, there's no way I can do anything else. I remember specifically watching the entire Godfather trilogy the year before while waiting for Mowgli to realise it was 2005:



This year, it's slightly slimmer pickings, but I do manage to find an entire series of a BBC programmme called Hustle:



For really vegetating the availability of DVD's from my local library has made me give up on an array of different films with differing paces and themes. I opt instead for an entire series of the Sopranos:



Or to delve into the debauched world of Macnamara and Troy for an entire sunday:



In the evening, we wander slowly towards the west end to meet Alice and her family at a coffeeshop on Woodlands road. It's only been about 36 hours, but it's good to be back with the three musketeers. We look over the photos from the road trip and head back down to Ayrshire for the night.......

The next day is spent doing very little other than organising a road trip for the next day. Luke SkyeTrekker has finally got a window clear where we can head off. Unfortunately due to various people having to be various places... It's going to be a one day trip. We are going to try to stay in the centre of Scotland and see what adventures we can get up to. On the second we go a little wander closer to home. We have a walk along the river ayr in Failford. Its a nice country walk.... and makes me feel a bit nostalgic for children's adventure walks.... Building tree houses... etc.







After this, it's a quick trip to the Supermarket I used to work in while Mowlgi gets a clean change of clothes for tomorrow's road trip where I stock up on Haggis and Cheese to take back to the flat countries.....

We have a few pints and games of pool in the local pub and then settle down for an early night ready for a road trip....