Not having a car in Glasgow is really liberating. I don't have to find parking spaces, don't have to worry about theft or vandalism, and don't need to worry about insurance or anything like that. What is frustrating is that on the weekends, if I want to take a trip somewhere, I'm somewhat limited by wherever the train goes (granted, the trains go to a million different places, but not to every site to see in the country). I could always rent one; it wouldn't be too difficult. But I hate to say that just haven't put in the effort to doing that. I should. It will help me learn to drive on the left side of the road both here and while doing fieldwork in Australia, but I just haven't.
What I did take the effort to do yesterday, though, was to get out of the city and do a little sightseeing. I really wanted to go out and visit some of the Islands or the Highlands, but being train- and time-limited (I woke up at half ten...) I decided for something closer. An officemate of mine mentioned before I left that a neat place to visit is Culzean Castle (pronounced kil-ane), about 50 miles south of Glasgow.
Getting there was a little bit of a trip in and of itself. The train left from Glasgow's Central Station in the city center, so I took the subway downtown and then walked over to the station from there (sidenote: Glasgow really should consider running a spur subway track from either Buchanan Street or St. Enoch stations to Glasgow Central...). I bought a ticket to the coastal town of Ayr, about an hour's ride away.
I was surprised by how many people were going to Ayr yesterday. I've taken the train before and it's never been as packed as it was. And not just packed with regular people, but packed with loads of highly make-uped women in fancy dresses and silly wide-brimmed hats and men in sharp suits with snazzy, shiny pointed-shoes. I asked the man sitting next to me if there was a holiday or something going on that weekend and he mentioned that the Grand National horse race (a two-day, multi-event, festivity considered to be the best of its type) was being held at the race course in Ayr. Mystery solved. Looking at my phone, I found out that tickets to the race were only £19, but I decided to go with my original plan since I was definitely not dressed for such a fancy event!
Once in Ayr, I walked a few blocks from the train station to the bus station (note: the personnel at the train station do not know where the bus station is), which is not altogether easy to find from the train station. But I got there and about ten minutes later, I boarded the bus, and was off for Culzean Castle.
I was worried that the weather was not going to be nice for the trip, hence my late morning-rise and hesitation about going on the trip in the first place, but the skies cleared up for most of the day so that I was warm wearing my sweater and button-up shirt. From the bus stop at Culzean, you walk about 20 minutes to get to the Visitor Center which is housed in a ring of former farm storage sheds (I use the term sheds lightly here). Like all Visitor Centers, this was no different with the obligatory cafe, gift shop, toy shop, and toilets, but they also have a 20-minute video presentation that I never did see...oops.
From the VC it's a ten-minute walk to the castle, which was designed by Robert Adam for David Kennedy, the 10th Earl of Cassillis, who provided Adam with the funds to turn what was just an old medieval tower house into an architectural masterpiece, considered to be Adams's best. While the house and lands remained in the Kennedy family since it was built in 1793, they were donated to the National Trust for Scotland in 1945 so that the Kennedy family could avoid Scotland's (UK's?) inheritance tax, which is imposed on any property or possessions handed down to an heir after the owner's death. Often, with large estates such as Culzean, the tax can diminish the heir's inheritance significantly and if the heir doesn't have their own business or other means to pay the tax, they may not be able to afford their inheritance and thus the estate may be sold to the National Trust to be accessible to the public. Such was the case with Culzean, although, the family did stipulate that the third floor of the house be available to President Eisenhower in recognition of his efforts during World War II. The President did use the apartment numerous times during and after his presidency, but now the apartment is available to be rented out to anyone wanting to spend a night in the Castle!
Walking up to the castle, you enter through a ruined archway and over a viaduct designed by Robert Adams to give the feeling to any visitors that the castle was seemingly floating over the landscape. The views of the castle from the ruined archway and the viaduct are fantastic and you get views of the palatial gardens behind the house. The castle is positioned right on top of a cliff and the cliff edge is lined by a balustrade and observation deck looking out to the Isle of Arran across the Firth of Clyde. Off the driveway, opposite of the castle, is a stables building with a beautiful clock tower (which I didn't go in, and now I'm not sure why). You have to pay to get into the Castle separately from what you pay to get in to the grounds, and I just didn't want to put down those few extra £££s, but I will do that next time because the inside is supposed to be fantastic. I just didn't really have the time to explore the grounds and the castle since I arrived at 1:30 and the last bus back to Ayr left the main road at 5:00.
But I walked around the perfectly manicured gardens, across spacious lawns and eventually went down to the beaches below the cliffs where there is an older boathouse and another small manor which I'm not sure what it was used for initially, but now houses an environmental education center. Most of the grounds at Culzean are covered in woodlands with many paths and walks to explore, so I followed the coastal path up above the rocky shoreline for a ways until it popped me back out at the western end of the estate at the Swan Pond which has been a feature of the estate since it's beginnings. Overlooking the pond from a hill is a Pagoda which used to be common on estate grounds of the day and the Kennedy family used their to house exotic animals such as monkeys and likely also housed large birds like swans. You can still see all the cages of the Pagoda, which was restored back in the '60s, but not much else up there.
The Swan Pond itself is much more interesting. There is a little ice cream parlor in what used to be the living room of another little summer cottage on the estate, which also was where the family kept their chickens and other poultry. Lining the edge of the pond near the ice cream parlor is a little walkway and balustrade where you can sit, people-watch, and enjoy the antics of dozens of ducks, swans, a few gannets and herons, and other birds.
And today was no exception. I noticed a lot of the mallards acting strangely as they'd quickly dive under the water and kind of burst back out, splashing water everywhere, kind of rearing up and stretching out their wings. They were all doing it, but I couldn't figure out why until I saw a female duck enter the water only to be propositioned by four mallards, competing to win the affections of the female duck. Welcome to ducky mating season! The ducks kind of have a nice life at the Swan Pond and on a wee island about 10 feet from the edge of the pond, the ducks even have an architecturally elegant, octagonal, 24-coop duck house. But antics like these are not without their dangers. A man and his wife were there with their dog and was letting the dog off the leash. It was cute at first when the dog charged into the water sending all the ducks flying in different directions, but it soon became apparent that the owners had no control over their dog. Millie (the dog) was chasing ducks in all different directions and unfortunately chased a mother duck who had about ten ducklings in toe. Of course the ducklings couldn't yet fly and they tried desperately to scatter away from the dog. Waiting nearby, on the edges of the pond, were some seagulls. I'm not talking little squakers from the beach, but big, brutes. Well, one of the seagulls, apparently fed up with eating garbage and bread crumbs from children, took advantage of the disarray, swooped in, and picked up one of the disoriented ducklings and carried him off. Remember, there are children around the pond watching all of this and other people are remarking on how the seagull just snatched up a baby duck. By this point, the owner of the dog is shouting for her to come back, "Millie! Millie! Get back here!!" and his wife is trying to get the dog back as well, but less aggressively, "Come here, Millie," in a singsongy voice. The dog just kind of looks a them and continues his chase. Now, however, parents of the children, annoyed at the spectacle and lack of control the man had over his dog, are now suggesting out loud that the man go into the pond to get his dog. Another parent admonishes the owner for allowing his dog to disrupt a pleasant afternoon and getting a baby duck killed. And so on. Eventually Millie returns to her owners, and they put her on the leash and call her a bad girl, walking away from the pond to leers and jeers from on-lookers. Even then, once the dog was gone, people were still watching the seagull, who now was occupying some space near a log, thrashing the dead duckling by its neck. I looked around for the other nine ducklings but only saw one swimming around. I'm hoping that the others found safety in the coops on the island, but I'm not convinced.
So with that, I decided to leave the Swan Pond and made my way back to the main Castle and set out to find the walled gardens. These gardens are quite extensive, though there is a lot of space between rows of flowers and trees. It would be a nice place to relax and walk around, but by this time, the weather started to turn nasty and rain was coming down. I waited a while in the vinery before sloughing back through the rain to take a few photos at the Deer Park and then back to the Visitor Center where I got a plastic bag to wrap my camera in and then headed back out to the main road to wait for the bus back to Ayr (which almost didn't happen as the bus just sped passed the bus stop even though there were five of us in there, making us run out to catch the bus, which did stop but was pulled off the side of the road well away from the stop).
It was a nice day, overall, and it was nice to use the train and bus systems once more to get out of Glasgow. I'd definitely go back as there are a few things I missed out on such as the tour of the Castle, fortified caves below the castle (off-limits to visitors except on rare ranger-led guides), and a series of gates in a random, wooded corner of the estate. But I think my next excursion out of town will have to be to the islands or the highlands as I have yet to experience them.
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