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Places to visit
in Ayrshire.

It’s 20:06 in Ayrshire.
Ayrshire

Burns country and the Clyde coast.

Ayrshire is Burns country, and Alloway is the place to start. The thatched cottage where he was born, the roofless kirk where Tam o' Shanter saw the witches dance and the steep old Brig o' Doon are all an easy walk apart. Along the coast stand Robert Adam's Culzean on its cliffs and Greenan's lone tower over the sands, and Troon has a long beach backed by dunes. Largs remembers its Viking battle of 1263, and West Kilbride fills its main street with makers. Inland lie Loch Doon, Loudoun Hill and the village of Straiton. Give Alloway a whole morning, with one ticket for the museum and cottage.

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From our archive19 hours agoAyrshireBrig o’ DoonAyrshireLoch Doon CastleAyrshirePrestwick Golf ClubAyrshireBurns MonumentAyrshireCulzean CastleIsle of ArranBrodick Castle, Garden and Country Park

Ayrshire this autumn, in our photographs.

Six places in Ayrshire, each as we found it.

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Places to visit19 hours ago

Arran Coastal Way with Thistle Trekking.

A guided walk round the whole of Arran on the 65-mile Arran Coastal Way, led by a mountain leader, with rooms, baggage and a support vehicle arranged.

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Did you know19 hours ago

You can tell who the lords of Lochranza were afraid of by which way the front door faces.

The MacSweens, who probably built the first castle here in the late 1200s, put their main door high up in the seaward wall, reached by a wooden stair or ladder. Everything that could threaten them came up this loch. Three hundred years later, when one of the Montgomerie earls of Eglinton rebuilt the place as a tower house, the entrance was moved: it now faced the land, and it sat at ground level. The sea had stopped being the thing to watch.

See Lochranza Castle · Isle of Arran
Did you know18 hours ago

A five-metre steel memorial to William Wallace stands at the foot of Loudoun Hill, in Ayrshire.

The Spirit of Scotland, a steel sculpture five metres high, is a memorial to Sir William Wallace. It was made by the Lanarkshire artist Richard Price and installed at the foot of the hill in 2004.

See Loudoun Hill · Ayrshire
From our guide18 hours ago

Alloway Auld Kirk.

This small roofless kirk is where Tam o' Shanter, riding home late from the market, saw witches and warlocks dancing in the firelight. It was built in 1516 and was already a ruin when Burns was a boy, and he set the most famous scene of his poem here. Wander the old kirkyard under the big trees and you will find a quieter link to the poet as well: the grave of his father, William Burnes, just inside the entrance. The National Trust for Scotland looks after it, and it is free to visit at any time. Come at dusk in autumn for the full effect.

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Places to visit18 hours ago

Machrie Moor Stone Circles.

Six stone circles on an open moor on Arran's west coast, raised around 2000 BC over older timber circles, the tallest stones over five metres high.

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From the JournalThe journal17 hours agoAyrshireBurns CottageAttractionAyrshireRobert Burns Birthplace MuseumAttractionAyrshireBurns House MuseumAttractionAyrshireAlloway Auld KirkAttractionAyrshireBurns MonumentAttractionAyrshirePoet’s PathWalk

Ayrshire - The Land That Inspired Robert Burns

While Scotland as a nation is rightly proud to claim Robert Burns as their own, it’s the south-west county of Ayrshire which has the deepest and strongest connection with the National Bard, and which proved the inspiration for many of his masterpieces.

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True or false17 hours ago

True or false: Brigadoon, the Highland village that appears for one day every hundred years, comes from an old Scottish legend.

In Ayrshire17 hours ago

Baltersan Castle, the 16th-century tower house near Maybole in South Ayrshire, is for sale to someone who will restore it.

John Kennedy of Pennyglen and his wife Margaret Cathcart built it in 1584, and though the roof went long ago its walls still stand to all five floors, with a split-level great hall, an angled oriel window and a secret chamber. It sits on a rise above the Carrick countryside close to Crossraguel Abbey, and its owner has put it up for sale through Galbraith after plans for a music school there found no backing.

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Did you know16 hours ago

In 1839 about 100,000 people came to watch a medieval jousting tournament at Eglinton Castle, near Kilwinning in Ayrshire, and it poured with rain.

Archibald, the 13th Earl of Eglinton, paid for the whole thing after the old medieval banquet was dropped from Queen Victoria's coronation the year before, and borrowed touches from Walter Scott's novel Ivanhoe. He had expected about 4,000 spectators. Among the knights was Prince Louis Napoleon, the future Emperor of the French. On the first day a sudden storm broke just as the parade was ready, the Lugton Water flooded and stranded much of the crowd, and the banquet and ball were called off. The knights jousted again on 30 August, and a bow used at the tournament is still on show in the Kilwinning Abbey Tower museum.

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Ayrshire16 hours ago

Burns set the witches' dance in Tam o' Shanter at Alloway Auld Kirk, where his own father lies buried.

Alloway Auld Kirk is the roofless ruin of a 16th-century church in the village of Alloway, just south of Ayr. Robert Burns made it the scene of the witches' dance in his poem Tam o' Shanter, and his father, William Burnes, is buried in the kirkyard. The ruin and the graveyard opened to the public again in 2008.

Find out more about Alloway Auld Kirk
From our guide16 hours ago

Loch Doon Castle.

Loch Doon Castle stands on the shore of a long, lonely loch in the hills south of Dalmellington, but it was built somewhere else. The Bruce earls of Carrick raised it in the late 1200s on an island in the loch. It changed hands more than once in the Wars of Independence before the Scots won it back for good in 1314. In 1935, when a hydro scheme raised the water, the castle was taken down stone by stone and rebuilt on the shore. Its rare eleven-sided curtain wall and pointed gateway survive. It is free to visit, and the road up the loch makes a fine drive.

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