2nd Thursday – Back to Scotland!

We had a fairly leisurely morning, a last breakfast at the Premier Inn Cathedral Quarter, then hopped in a taxi bound for the Stena Line ferry terminal at the Belfast port, 10 minutes away. There’s really not much to say about the ferry trip across to Scotland – the boat was big and fast, there are good facilities on board, and the trip was super smooth. Levi watched a movie while I spent the couple of hours catching up on a work thing I should have done before I left.

Bye bye Belfast

Hello Loch Ryan - about where Dad caught lots of mackerel one time!

When we arrived at the Cairnryan ferry terminal in Scotland we picked up our bags off the carousel, and went through security to the main terminal area. When I say security, I mean we just walked out the door. There were some uniformed bods floating around (at an airport it’s “airside”, presumably at a ferry terminal it’s “waterside”?), and they stopped the odd person to ask where they were from, what they were doing in Scotland – but it really was remarkably low key. Off to the Hertz desk to get our new rental car, where we had a good giggle at the attendant’s story about a mishap she’d had once involving a bull falling on her car. Yes that’s right! Once upon a time, a few years ago but not far away, she was driving along a lane just minding her own business… when suddenly a great big (and obviously rather clumsy) bull fell off the raised verge and landed straight on the bonnet of her car! That’s ridiculous enough, you’d think – and the car was a write-off – but what really took the cake was that the farmer then proceeded to sue her for loss of the bull!

Anyway, well insured as it is, our new rental car is horrible. It’s a Ford C-Max compact MPV. It has more boot-space than the Hyundai iX35 we had in Ireland, but that’s about the only positive thing I can say about it. I can’t get the seat adjusted to feel comfortable, I’m either too far from the pedals or too close to the steering wheel, and I can’t seem to ever find the best gear to be in. Just nasty. (And over the next few days, while I got used to it, I never grew to feel comfortable let alone like it.)

Leaving Cairnryan we drove up the Ayrshire coast, on our way to tonight’s B&B. My impression of driving on Scottish roads is that they are on balance better than in Ireland – better condition, and a bit wider – but the thing that really gets me is that the road markings in towns (and it turns out in cities too) are very worn. They’re very bitsy, often almost disappeared altogether, and really provide only the vaguest indication of lane boundaries and give way lines etc. Another thing I’ve struggled with is that they paint a line across the entry to a street, not just a line to show where to stop to turn out of the street – so I keep on thinking I’m entering a one-way street in the wrong direction. Most disconcerting.

But the nicest thing… every little village and town up the coast has a “come back soon” sign on the way out, but it’s written so quaintly in Scottish: “Haste ye back”. Love it.

The scenery up the coast is lovely; the farmland is attractive, but it’s the seaward views that are really appealing – across to some of the islands off the west coast of Scotland, as well as all the way back to Ireland and the Antrim Coast. The islands must make the waters quite sheltered, and we saw a few yachts out – and of course we’ve got another gorgeous day of beautiful weather.

Our main stop on the way up the coast was Culzean (said “Killane”) Castle, which was fabulous. There was a lovely winding drive through the estate down to the castle and associated buildings, and although based on the number of cars in the carpark it’s a busy tourist attraction, it didn’t feel very busy. The pedestrian entry to the grounds of the castle proper is through a great stone arch (apparently deliberately made a little unfinished-looking to add romance, a staffer told us) and across a bridge into a small plaza.

The first room we went into was the armoury – not a bunker, but a sort of drawing room or similar, with all the walls lined with hundreds of flintlock pistols and swords and bayonets arranged in different patterns. A couple of rooms further on we came to the grand oval staircase, which took us to many more very grand rooms, beautifully decorated and furnished, and with magnificent sea and coast views. The castle is really in a tremendous position. Downstairs we saw the kitchens, and got a strong sense of the “upstairs, downstairs” lives that the different residents must have had.

It's just a lid!

One cute touch through the castle, to help keep younger visitors engaged, was that there is a little Lego man hiding somewhere in every room. (You reckon you got them all, Levi, but that one in the dining room was definitely just a lid on a vase… It was the lid!)

The other cool thing (‘scuse the pun) we looked at was the castle’s ice house, an egg-shaped chamber built in under the bridge to the castle. In winter they would take ice from the pond and pack it into the ice house, which was shaped to help the ice last longer and also lined with straw for extra insulation. The ice was used to preserve meats and other perishables (nicer than salting), but also used directly in drinks and food…frozen pond water, eww yuck!

After looking at the castle and the ice house, Levi and I went for a walk through some of the estate grounds - and seeing a pheasant on the path and some deer in a fenced-in woodland area, it was quite charming.

Bargany House B&B in Troon where we’re staying tonight is in a great spot right on the shore of the Firth of Clyde/Troon bay. I asked the B&B owner, Carolanne, if people swim in the bay (I imagine it would be pretty cold for a lot of the year), and she said yes indeed they do. She is a long-distance swimmer, and has used it for training – although she said you could just about walk right across, it only gets to about chest-deep.

For dinner tonight we went to a restaurant in Troon, which was busy and had a decent menu, but the most notable thing was the G&T menu - pretty impressive!