Continued from Part 1…
After Dunure castle, we continued South down the coast. The view all round were beautiful, and there was an old disused railway line on our route that hadn’t been used in 80+ years. We kept passing dismantled bridges, and over tiny bridges. Later on I read up on it, it was known as the Maidens and Dunure Light Railway, and you can trace the route it took on a map. It’s very neatly carved out of the countryside.
A short drive later and we found ourselves in Culzean Castle (pronounced “culane”) and country park, the drive from the main road to the castle itself was through a short forest, it was a very secluded area. The walk from the car park across a stone bridge to the main castle is very picturesque, and the weather was just getting better and better.
Inside the castle, the first few rooms were filled with small arms; pistols and blades. I spoke to one of the curators, he said this was the largest collection of antique pistols in the world, all of which had been “fired in anger”! The vast majority of these pistols had directly killed someone in a war at some time or other, which was a spooky thing to think about considering just how many of them were hanging from the walls.
We walked around the rest of the estate, and it was much like any other. Ornate decorations throughout, well-dressed tables, lots of old portraits and paintings covering the walls. I got told off for showing Helen how an old writing desk worked as well, but other than that we were well-behaved. We tagged along on the back of a tour for a short time too, and one of the paintings on the walls was of Culzean castle itself, I made sure to get a close-up of this one.
Opposite the main castle was a clock tower, gift shop, and what seemed to be some accommodation, possibly for a groundskeeper or some such. The sight of the clock tower was a little ruined as there was a big office-sized printer in the window (you can see in the pictures below), but it was still a beautiful building.
With the gift shop out of the way, we decided to have a long walk around the grounds, and they were very large. There were multiple fountains, atriums, small gardens, large gardens, secret gardens, and more and more!
An extremely long walk later, we got back to the car with aching legs, and made our way back to Ayr through the countryside. When we got back to the hotel around 5ish, we booked a table at a local restaurant, and had a couple of hours rest before dinner.
For dinner we went down to a lovely little restaurant on the River Ayr called The Waterfront, which was very tasty and filling. Not only was the food superb, but the service was above and beyond, to the point that we made sure we mentioned our waiter to the manager on the way out!
Finally, on the way back to the hotel for the evening, we stopped by the beach to watch the sun set across the Firth of Clyde over the Isle of Arran.
A fantastic way to end the day…
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