A bit of fresh Ayr

Today was a very good day for all sorts of reasons. Mainly friendship, health, scenery and food. Heather had texted me a few days ago to suggest that the four of us go for a walk. Now, if Heather had not suggested that, I would probably have opted for a quiet day at home today, and that would have been a mistake. However I knew that we could do with some exercise, that it would be nice to see Heather and Ewan and of course I knew that James would love the idea of a walk! Heather left it up to us to decide where to go and after much deliberation and consultation of the tide tables James decided to revisit the Ayrshire coastal path, to walk from Dunure to Ayr. He printed out the maps and we collected Heather and Ewan at the early hour of 8.30 a.m. to make sure that we would get round the Heads of Ayr before high tide. We parked at Ayr train station and took a taxi to Dunure. We had a great time! The sea and island views were beautiful. It was a good length of walk at about 15 km, and the sky was blue, ribboned with wavy lines of white clouds. It was also very windy which made our route very chilly in parts, and some of the beaches were very stony underfoot, necessitating some fancy footwork in order not to slip! We enjoyed a coffee along the way and made good time - we didn't hang about much because of the wind! As we walked along the promenade in Ayr I had a strange vision of it being lined with old-fashioned cars like my Dad's Hillman Hunter; maybe a memory from the 1960s? We went into The Waterfront Restaurant down at the River Ayr because it looked pleasant from the outside, and it was equally nice inside with great service and delicious food. Heather and Ewan treated us to lunch and we all chatted and relaxed, I felt very virtuous after our exercise. Refreshed, we walked the last kilometre back to the car and set off home. We stopped at the Wheat Sheaf in Symington on the way home for a final refreshment, it's a tiny and old pub which is a walking club favourite. When we got home I was exhausted and James was ravenously hungry so we had dinner and watched the film Troy (we watched the start of it on Saturday but James fell asleep). This time we both successfully stayed awake until the end. It was all very watchable but the siege of Troy seemed to have been condensed from ten years to about a fortnight! So now I am in my bath, pleasantly tired and very happy after a really good day. I am so glad that Heather suggested that we go for a walk.