Wright After Reading

Arran is often called Scotland in miniature. A friend even told me that before I came over.

A few weeks back, we made the journey from Ardrossan to celebrate my 27th birthday. My first Scottish ferry journey.  We wasted no time in checking out Brodick Castle and getting a start up Goat’s Fell (the hill that looks down over the harbour).

Cloudy ain't it

The weather was pretty crummy, and I got extremely wet before starting to head back. I was strolling up in the clouds, and didn’t make it to the summit because the rain was making me cold and the rocks slippery. We probably started too late in the day, and were in dire need of hot chocolate and a change of clothes.

The next day, we were determined to go kayaking. However, we weren’t up there in time for the morning trip so we rented a couple of bikes and took  the road from Brodick up to Sannox. Around Sannox, there was a pretty good size hill and I lost Aarti for a little while. We decided to head back, and a good thing too because it started to rain very hard about ten minutes later. We sought refuge in a pub in Corrie until the rain calmed down.

On our way back, we stopped at a local cheese shop for some arran cheese and fudge.

I don’t remember any of my previous kayaking trips requiring a wet suit but they gave us wet suits this time. We made roughly the same trip by kayak that we had just made by bike, but it was still really fun.

My arms were getting really tired by the end (we either did a lot that day or I’m really out of shape), and my legs were getting a bit sore too. The adjustable handles where you put your feet kept sliding down so I don’t think I was ever sitting right for very long.

We even had a curious onlooker following us a while. This little sea otter was quite interested in us for about ten minutes.  Speaking of sea life, there were also a lot of jellyfish so probably not a good swimming area.

We didn’t make it up to the north coast at Lochranza or down south to Kildonan or Lamlash so we may need to make a trip back where we can cover a bit more ground. The buses were really good if you wanted to meet up with the ferry, but lousy otherwise.  I think you could easily spend four or five days on Arran, so I thought we did pretty well for a day and a half.