A showery start to the day, with a rather unhelpful very heavy shower at the point of hitching up! However the day got better with some sunshine in the afternoon. Our rather short journey was quite straightforward, we even had to pull in and wait for awhile in a lay-by so that we didn’t arrive before the midday curfew. There followed a slight traffic jam at the site entrance with 4 of us trying to get in bang on 12 and 2 (slightly) late aways trying to get out along the short single track site road – but hey we are all on holiday and it was resolved in a very gentile manner! We were soon set up…

And ready to explore. The site is a short distance from the River Ayr Way – so we did! Heading towards the town centre (or more precisely the sea) we followed the river, passing countless bridges on the way, before crossing at Auld Bridge looking upstream…

and down towards the sea, with just a glimpse of Arran in the distance…

From the bridge we cut across part of the town centre (sadly much of it looking quite run down with quite a few empty shops) and made our way down onto the long sandy beach, which stretches round the bay to the lush green Heads of Ayr cliffs.

This beach ends at the South Pier and was reasonably busy (well it is a fine Sunday afternoon!) so Poppydog had to make do with the 8m of her lead.

We wandered down the pier to take a closer look at the lighthouse.

Now how is this for a fine and imaginative piece of sculpture?

Impressed? Hmm not nearly as much as I was – I asked someone just to make sure that I wasn’t missing something. Apparently not! It is made from coal resin sourced from Glenbuck at the start of the river Ayr Way (it’s source some 40 miles away) and an identical sculpture made from sand from Ayr is situated in Glenbuck – ok thoughtful but hey a little imagination too?

Two thoughts of the day:

First impressions of Ayr? Well let’s just say we probably won’t be back!

I think that the presence of a main road tracking along the coastline has lessened our enjoyment of this coastline.