At last the weather seems to be warming up and we had some cloud but mostly a warming sunny day – lovely! Today takes us to Irvine a few miles north of Troon and we joined the beach just before arriving at Irvine. There was loads of free parking and behind the beach a huge area of open parkland before the dunes.

The beach towards Irvine was fairly busy (not surprisingly on a sunny Saturday afternoon)…

And so to give Poppydog a runaround we decided to walk along the beach towards Troon to where we left off yesterday.

After a good play we wandered along the beach to Irvine (Poppydog reluctantly back on the lead once there were more people and dogs about as she really is a menace!) and walked out onto Irvine Bar to take a proper look back at this lovely soft white sandy beach.

From here we wandered inland towards the town along the river, passing the abandoned Science Park (The Big Idea – built at a cost of £14m in 2000 and closed in 2003 as it wasn’t covering costs!) and Innovation Bridge, also closed.Here the river opens up into a large area of water (or mud and sand flats at low tide), and small harbour.

Around the harbour are a number of galleries, pubs and cafes and pretty painted cottages.

An handsome sculpture of ‘The Carters’ – who would have transported goods from the then busy port for distribution throughout Scotland, stands proudly on the harbour side (pity about the scaffy fence in the background).

We didn’t actually venture into the town itself but this area was very pleasant and has clearly benefited from quite a lot of work in recent times, much appreciated with plenty of people around on this sunny Saturday afternoon – good to see. A very pleasant 7mile stroll.

Two thoughts of the day:

It is nice to see regenerated areas that are still maintained and enjoyed as so many after the initial spend just seem to fall into neglect.

The beauty of having so many beaches (pretty much the whole Ayrshire coastline is one long beach) you can always find a bit of space away from the ‘madding crowds’.