Monday 4 July 2011

Arran



We had a lovely holiday on the Isle of Arran, off the west coast of Scotland. It's probably the most accessible of the Scottish Islands, just a few hours by public transport from Edinburgh and the trains and ferries are timetabled nicely together. Once you get there, there's a regular bus service that takes you all round the island. (I definitely recommend buying a day saver bus ticket and spending the day on the bus, getting off where-ever looks interesting!). Arran is often described as Scotland in miniature and it really is! There are mountains, lowlands, beautiful beaches, wonderful waterfalls, red deer, seals, a wonderful selection of birds, golf courses with good provision for nature, a castle with beautiful gardens and a nature reserve. The photo below shows Goatfell the highest mountain on Arran, taken from the beach at Brodick.


We stayed in Brodick, at the Glenarty, a small Bed and Breakfast Hotel with excellent environmental credentials and beautifully decorated (though small) rooms with views across to Goatfell.

The Arran Brewery, near to Brodick Castle, brews one of my favourite beers (Arran Blonde) and also has a lovely beer garden, overlooking a field where spotted flycatchers spend their days catching flies (hadn't seen this bird for years until our recent day trip to Biggar and here they were again in Arran!). We also saw the flycatchers nest in a hole in a wall and also saw house martins' nests under the eaves of the brewery building. (Normally I would put hyperlinks here to the appropriate pages for martins and flycatchers in the RSPB website, but currently if I try to access the RSPB site my computer crashes! Sorry about that!)



The Glenashdale waterfall near Whiting Bay is stunning and I'll blog about that tomorrow!

11 comments:

Draffin Bears said...

Hi Juliet,

Looks like the perfect place to getaway and I loved seeing your photographs. Thanks for showing us.

Happy week
Hugs
Carolyn

Dartford Warbler said...

Arran looks a beautiful island. Lovely photos.

Hannah Stephenson said...

This looks so amazing!!! I am vicariously traveling with you...

One day I hope I'll get to Scotland (and then say hello in person!).

bunnits said...

What a beautiful place. I know you must have had a wonderful time.

Marion McCready said...

Almost in my neck of the woods! :)
I'm ashamed to say I've never been to Arran despite being able to see it from where I live.

Anonymous said...

It's a beautiful part of the world. I feel teary reading this because it has been a long, long time since I have been to Arran. You have made me yearn to go back!

RG said...

Where a Scotsman goes for vacation - "Little Scotland"

(Same reason we Pacific NWesters pretty much just go down the road a bit for vacation!)

Anonymous said...

Sounds wonderful - if I go to Scotland again I will go to that island.

Sam Pennington said...

Amazing pictures! Glad you've had a good break. I'd love to visit Arran too, but not made it there yet!

Carver said...

What a gorgeous spot for a vacation. Wonderful photographs.

Martin said...

I'm so glad you had a great time, visiting Arran. We did most of our exploring on foot, back in 1975, a day ticket sounds like a very attractive option.