With visitors coming in a couple of weeks the Organizing Committee, i.e. Neil and Christina, Iain and I, have drawn up a timetable of activities. One of them is to be a day trip to Arran. So today I made a rekky (i.e. reconnaisance) trip to the island situated as shown in red below.
MacBraynes run a boat from Ardrossan and the whole thing is fairly easy to manage as there are regular trains going down the coast ending up at Ardrossan Harbour.
And I am happy to report that everything is joined-up with trains, the boat service and buses operating on the island. The food on board was good, the coffee hot and very reasonable. Believe me, it is changed days!
After circumnavigating the island on the public bus (with my free bus pass!) I ended up back at Brodick Bay in time to catch the 4:30 pm boat back to the mainland.
This is Blackwaterfoot on the west side of the island. There are many new houses built here and they seem to be occupied. (This island is very much a holiday island.) Also the bus served as a school bus. It picked up 12 children from Pirnhill Primary which is on the less populated side of the island and dropped them off en route to, and (mostly) in Loch Ranza at the north end.
1 comment:
This Island of Arran looks interesting; it reminded me that years ago, when I was engaged, my fiancé like the Aran Isle sweaters so much that I started to knit one for him. We got married and I put the sweater away, unfinished. I never went back because it was a difficult stitch and I had lost the pattern. So I bought him an Aran Isle sweater “type” for his birthday one year. But once in a while he reminds me of this unfinished Aran Isle Sweater (still in a box somewhere). Would there be two islands, the Isle of Arran in Scotland and Aran Isle in Ireland?
Post a Comment