Travel
Often overlooked by tourists, the Ayrshire & Galloway coast is marked by clifftop castles, yawning beaches and historic lighthouses.
ByJamie Lafferty
Published July 29, 2023
• 5 min read
This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
They call us the Honest Men, which makes me laugh every time the team gets caught cheating. Ayr United takes its moniker from a 1791 Robert Burns line: ‘Auld Ayr, wham ne’er a toun surpasses, for honest men, and bonnie lasses.’ I often wonder if those things were true then; I know they aren’t now.
My hometown is one of those Victorian seaside spots that’s faded like an old photograph as time has passed and holidaymakers have sought sunnier climes in the Costa del Wherever. We still do ice cream, though, and we still have our beach — three miles long, golden, vast at low tide.
When I visit home, as a tourist as much as a son of Ayrshire, I see the place in a different light. Travelling south from Glasgow — Ayr in the sun with the Firth of Clyde behind, and the Isle of Arran more distant still — I realise that to drive our eclectic coast is something special, no matter where you’re from.
Immediately south from Ayr there are ruined castles at Greenan and the ultra-quaint fishing village of Dunure. For something more complete, the National Trust-backed Culzean Castle has been kept in remarkable condition since it was built in the late 1700s. As much a splendid country manor as a castle, its ornamental gardens and forest trails are, by turns, beautiful and labyrinthine — the sort of place a child’s imagination can run wild. The cliffs below the castle look defensive, but in truth, the Earl of Cassilis built up here because he wanted a home with a view more than a fortress. As a child, from its lofty ramparts I’d spot basking sharks swimming in the sea and, on the clearest days, could see a black line on the horizon that adults told me was Northern Ireland.
The roads in this part of Scotland are so beautiful and full of distractions as to be almost dangerous. Perhaps the most hazardous spot is near Culzean, high on a coastal route where vehicles are likely to stop with little warning. It would be easy to mock or chastise this behaviour, but the drivers are seeking magic at the Electric Brae. Bores may tell you that a conspiracy of perspective and landscape is responsible for an optical illusion that gives the impression that a vehicle in neutral will roll up hill, but I — a trusted local — would tell you that it’s pure witchcraft. In any case, stop at the Electric Brae, put your hazard lights on and see what happens.
South of here, Girvan is worth visiting for ice cream and for crystal-clear views of Ailsa Craig, a prehistoric volcanic plug that doubles as a vast bird sanctuary and a quarry for almost all the green granite used to make the world’s competitive curling stones. Inexplicably underused as a tourist destination, only Ailsa Craig Trips runs tours out to what’s one of Scotland’s least-visited large islands, offering a chance to see the huge colonies of gannets and guillemots and to walk the little-trodden shores of this uninhabited place.
From here, the road to Galloway runs so close to the sea that I can taste the salty air even as I write this sentence. Like Ayrshire, Galloway is often bypassed by travellers rushing north to the Central Belt or beyond. Fans of dark skies come here — Galloway was Europe’s first International Dark Sky Park — but I’ve always preferred sticking to the coast, around Loch Ryan, then heading on to the Rhins of Galloway.
Hanging off the most southwesterly part of the country, this rough-hewn peninsula appears like the head of a hammer on the map. When I was young, my family would drive to Portpatrick, a beautiful little seaside village with a tight port and cafes competing to make the best fish and chips.
The Portpatrick Hotel still hangs incongruously grand above the village, much as it has since 1905. It’s a junior building compared to the Corsewall Lighthouse, which has stood for almost a century longer at the northern tip of the Rhins. It was automated in 1994 and, not long after that, the old keeper’s accommodation was converted into a hotel. Having been on the market for almost a decade, the place was rescued and updated by an ambitious couple in the middle of the pandemic.
Following single-track roads south eventually leads to the Mull of Galloway Lighthouse, dramatically located on a clifftop at the southernmost point of Scotland. From here, on good days it’s possible to simultaneously see the Isle of Man and the Irish coast. At these most Celtic of coordinates, England can feel very far away.
Published in the UK & Ireland supplement, distributed with the Jul/Aug 2023 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).
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