Culzean

Categories: places

Tags: photos, Scotland, Culzean, castle, Electric Brae

Date: 10 April 2008 22:15:41

Last weekend HD and I took off for the afternoon to Culzean Castle, on the west coast. This is a national Trust place, with a castle and considerable country park and gardens and whatnot. We didn't get there till a couple of hours before closing time, so limited ourselves to a walk round the Walled Garden, and then wandering round the Swan Pond (it was more like a lake, but Tchaikovsky got there first so it has been demoted) towards the cliffs, where we did a very civilised clifftop walk with great views. It was a bit blowy and not that warm, but it was lovely and sunny and we got very clear views out to Ailsa Craig (an uninhabited island now owned by the RSPB), Isle of Arran, and the Cumbraes. We took a quick look at the outside of the castle (and, importantly, found the little room - it had been too cold and blustery and there were too many other people around to go down the behind-a-bush route), then discovered the coffee shop was closing, so didn't get a cup of tea at the end of the walk, sadly. I thought it was lovely - the sort of place you could take parents and oldies for a visit :)

Here are a few pictures:

On the way back home we drove along a stretch of coast road which includes a really odd feature known as "Electric Brae". We didn't try this trick ourselves, but did pass someone else doing it and it is the strangest sight - basically it's a natural optical illusion, where the road really looks like it's going uphill when actually it's going downhill, so if you park your car without the brake on and let it roll, it looks like it's rolling uphill. It's very hard to explain, but having seen it, even just briefly in passing, I couldn't believe how Uphill it looked like it was rolling. Very bizarre!

Anyway, Culzean - worth a visit. I haven't been very good at bagging Scottish castles (less effort than bagging Munros). After 2 and a half years, it's my 3rd (and I didn't even go inside).