Thursday morning and by some miracle we managed to find the motorway and retreat from Glasgow with relative ease, despite it being peak hour.
Barb was determined that we must see Culzean Castle. Why? Because it's the only castle left on the "Castles of Scotland" tea towel she purchased in Tighnabruaich that's why. Makes perfect sense, and justifies the scary diversion to Tighnabruaich and back.
Culzean Castle situated on Scotland's west coast just south of Ayr turned out to be wonderful and well worth seeing. It is situated in very extensive grounds and we visited the castle gardens first. It took some time to walk around these magnificent gardens which include a greenhouse vinery and orchard as well as huge borders of flower beds.
 |
| The flower beds |
 |
| The greenhouse vinery |
 |
| Gorgeous gardens |
 |
| the walled garden ablaze with colour |
There was also a deer park and swan pond, which recieved only a cursory glance due to time restrictions for our journey (not to mention absence of swans - they'd been relocated!). We walked instead up to see the castle. The main castle building had been redesigned by Robert Adam in the mid 1700s, but there was a gate house and tower dating much further back than that, possibly to the 1400s. The Kennedy family handed it over to the National Trust, so it is now open to the public and very well cared for.
 |
| The old clock tower |
 |
| the castle battlements |
 |
| an imposing position by the sea |
 |
| The Robert Adam designed castle |
 |
| The castle entrance gates |
We headed further south towards Girvan and as we rounded a corner Ailsa Craig loomed into view. Barb became very excited by this. Her childhood friend Ailsa Craig was named for this island, and as a child she was very impressed that Ailsa had her very own island named after her (not thinking it could possibly be the other way around!). Unfortunately there was nowhere to safely pull over for the all-important photo and Barb managed to achieve a very fetching close-up of John's nostril as she tried to take a photo out the drivers side window over the top of him. We did eventually find somewhere to pull over. Photo achieved!
 |
| Ailsa Craig island |
Driving further along towards Dumfries we diverted briefly in to see Carsluith castle. Barb who is by now somewhat a connoisseur of castles deemed it unworthy of close inspection, so we jumped back in the car until we saw a sign for Threave Castle just outside Castle Douglas.
 |
| Carsluith Castle |
We should've smelled a rat when the single lane road into the castle became even smaller. We were confronted with two cars coming from the opposite direction and we were forced to back up some distance to let them pass. Some lunatic had parked their car in the only possible passing space. Grrrr.
In the end we didn't even see the castle as it was not in view anywhere near the visitor centre. We quickly lost interest and drove off again.
We finally re-joined the motorway at Gretna Green, that place of historic novel fame where the young and willful girl elopes with her unsuitable lover to get married without daddy's permission.
It was a very fast drive on the motorway down to Penrith where we turned off towards Keswick and our destination of Bowness-on-Windermere in the Lake District.
The views of Lake Windermere are breathtaking. This is a very high-density tourist area, with not only the attractions of the lake and nearby moutains for walking, but this is also Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter territory. We stopped at a pub on the lake to have an early dinner as we seemed to have missed lunch. It was good pub food too. Barb almost fell into Lake Windermere in her haste to take photos afterwards of the lovely views.
 |
| yachts on Lake Windermere |
We finally found Eastbourne Guest House by following a town map cheerfully supplied for free by one of the girls in a local shop. Susan says the GPS has finally arrived at her place. Oh good!
No comments:
Post a Comment