City Chic and Parks

This morning when we left Fort William the sky was blue and there was some snow on the mountains. With quite a distance to travel on the Saturday of a long weekend here ( Monday is a Bank Holiday) we wondered if extra traffic on the roads might impact on our arrival time in Ayr later in the day. 

Solution to potential problem - don't pull over to take pictures. Fact - the roads are so close to the edges of Loch Lomond there are hardly any pull over places anyway. But we still managed a few.

The roads were quite hectic with traffic but mostly heading in the opposite direction to us. We started to wonder why there was a mass exodus from the direction we were heading and were concerned about some of the comments from locals in regard to where we were heading hinting that Ayr was a bit of a dive. Oh dear and the weather was starting to turn grey and bleak too.

Time was against us for a stop off in Glasgow so the Erskine Bridge was as close as we got. It never was high on our must do list as it was not highly recommended from work colleague and Glaswegian Mark, although work colleague & Glaswegian Jim thought we should visit but he's been living in Australia for 25 years now so what would he know.

Occasionally we have been know to turn down the wrong road and as Sandy says - there is no such thing as a wrong turn on holidays because you always see something different. In this instance it gave us the opportunity to take this picture which illustrates the identical houses that are typical in many of the streets within a town.

As we approached Ayr we realised that it was not the quaint seaside town we thought it would be but instead a large town, population 47,000. Mmmmmm, maybe this was going to spoil our record for good travel picks!

Check in to Miller House B&B and lay all fears to rest. We have a beautiful suite, very modern .

But wait, there is more, we have a short stroll into town and find a fantastic Italian Restaurant. Again modern decor. The service, food and prices are all excellent.

After dinner we take a walk in the town and along the esplanade despite the cold wind and occassional drizzle. We find many parks and green open areas.

Beautiful gardens and there are some interesting historical finds too.

And more wide open spaces.

Then as we get closer to our accomodation we find Bellevue Crescent with beautifull light honey coloured stone terraced houses (reminiscent of Bath). 

A stunning display of flowering cherries on both sides of the street.

So Ayr was a good choice after all with the right price to go with it.

Tomorrow we leave Scotland and head for the Lakes District in England. We will head east for a bit when we arrive at the border so that we can see some of Hadrian's Wall.