Ayr.

Today it was a case of trying to dodge the rain showers. It had been raining quite heavily overnight but this morning was showing some signs of improvement. About mid morning the sun finally arrived amid blue skies so we headed off to look around the racecourse side of the River Ayr. Well the sunshine didn’t last long so we headed back to camp for lunch.

A beautiful church in Ayr now dis-used.

Queen Dot of Scotland for a day.

After lunch the weather improved sufficiently enough for us to venture into the main shopping centre of town. The town centre is very old and still has that dirty industrial age look about it. Many buildings were built in the 1800’s and among them was the oldest residence in town, Loudoun Hall. Built in the 15th century the house belonged to three prominent families over the years.The Tait’s, Campbell’s and Moore’s were all Provost’s and MP’s of the district in their times and used the house to make decisions, sign documents and dispense justice. A bit like Town Hall, Law Court and Parliament all rolled into one.

Entrance to Loudoun Hall in Ayr. The oldest residence in town.

Loudoun Hall the oldest residence gets a clean up.

The building contained a bake house and brew house as well as a private garden where distinguished guest’s such as Mary Queen of Scots would be entertained. She is recorded as staying here in August 1563.

Wallace Tower in the centre of Ayr.

South Ayrshire Town Hall in Ayr.

After a good look around town we took the riverside walk back to camp which took us through some very old parts of town with cobbled streets. We passed the new and expanding Ayr College buildings with it’s all weather sports stadium at the rear where we walked up through the Craigie Estate Gardens to the camp site.

This fella's just been fishing and is now drying out.

On our way into town we had seen a motorhome parked just outside the camp gates which we thought odd as it wasn’t parked in a very good place. Upon our return here it was being loaded onto a breakdown recovery vehicle. Striking up a conversation with the lady owner we found out that the vehicle has had an intermittent fault since new and they have never been able to fix it. Well they shouldn’t have any problem now. The only problem is that the vehicle is now out of warranty, typical! We had no sooner reached Gypsy Rover when the heaven's opened up again including a brief hail storm not long after we were back in the warm. An hour later and it’s bright sunshine again but I think we’ve done our dash for one day.

Oh Dear!  Intermittent fault they have been trying to fix since new. Now out of warranty.

It took a while but they got it on.

Bit of an overhang so better hang a safety jacket on the towball.