From Source to Sea (part 1)

When I set out to do 500 miles, I didn’t just want to clock it up on a treadmill, or go round and round Holyrood Park (I think you can get lifted for that). To keep things interesting, I decided I wouldn’t do the same route twice. Also, if possible, I wanted to do a few ‘big’ walks. This hasn’t gone exactly to plan – a sore foot put paid to the West Highland Way weekend – but I did knock off the biggest challenge last Saturday.

And it was a bit of a monster. The River Ayr Walk is 41 miles from the source of the River Ayr in East Ayrshire to the sea at Ayr harbour. I hoped to test myself by taking my GPS and my skinny ankles along the whole route in a day.
http://walking.visitscotland.com/walks/southscotland/river_ayr_walk

The wee dot at the end of the arrow is Glenbuck, the start of the walk (and birthplace of Bill Shankley).

Once again, I was surprised at how few people were out walking the route. There were a number of locals on the parts of the path immediately around towns and villages – identified by pipes, dogs and knowing looks (no rucksacks) – but otherwise the route was deserted.

As the day went on, I decided this might have had something to do with the unfinished nature of several stretches of the walk, which other potential walkers had perhaps gotten wind off. As well as one 3-mile stretch that had hardly been started - requiring a frustrating detour - a lot of the walk was in a partially completed state.

I can’t help but feel that Scotland does a lot of this. I’ve noticed the same thing at our Science Museum in Glasgow and at Edinburgh’s show-piece Museum of Scotland. It’s almost as if we think that the energy and resources that have gone into these things won’t be appreciated if we don’t illustrate the effort involved by leaving it in a deliberately unfinished or partially operative state. (I won't even mention the parliament…)

At one stage I had to surface a considerable stretch of the walkway myself.

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I encountered plenty of wildlife, including this oystercatcher, who flapped around and made some rather plaintiff squaking sounds. In contrast to last week’s encounter with the sheep's heid in the fence, there was nothing I could do for this pitiful little fella.

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This was one local who was keen to make a stretch of the River Ayr Walk his own private domain. I didn’t contest the point.

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I was bold enough to get a good close-up… after I’d put a hefty barbed wire fence between us.