Advertisement
Published: July 21st 2009
Edit Blog Post
Hello lovelies!
We recently went to Arran for an overnight stay. Its amazing to think that despite being so close, and only an hour's ferry ride away, we'd never been before now. We decided to go without Beth - A) to get a little bit of time to ourselves, and B) we wanted to have a good old drive round the island and do a reccie of best places, beaches and activities in the event that we might want to come back for a proper holiday. After this trip we have decided that we'll def be back and it will be very soon at that!
We got the idea for going to Arran from this nice couple we met in a pub in Glasgow Byers Road a few months back. They were raving about this country club / resort malark called 'Auchrannie', so we checked out the website and found they were doing a special booking for £99 per night for a room sleeping up to 4 people. We booked it and are glad we did as it was very good. There are 3 sections to the resort - a country house hotel with an modern extension for rooms
and leisure facilities / pool and restaurants, a separate Spa resort which also has pool and leisure facilities. Additionally there are a few self catering lodges which sleep up to 8 people, but they are a bit to expensive for us costing about £800 - £1400 per week depending on season. It was super clean, very friendly, staff were efficient and all the facilities were top notch. We would absolutely use them again. WE had dinner in Brambles restaurant within the resort - Alan had fillet steak with onion rings as big as your head and crispy chips, and and I had cumin crusted lamb with mustard mash and delicious wilted herby spinach. Diet is well bust!
Auchrannie Resort, Arran We booked ferry crossing with Caledonian MacBrayne, which is the ferry company that operates crossings to most of the islands in the Clyde and Hebrides. It was really easy to book online, and costs £9.30 per passenger and about £50 for your car. Something to note about the car is that petrol on Arran was about 10p more expensive per litre than on the mainland so fill up before you go. The ferry leaves from Adrossan in Ayrshire, and sails to
Whisky barrels at Arran distillery.
They smelled amazing. Sweet, smoky and booooozy! Brodick on Arran. Brodick is the main town and has plenty of shops, bars, restaurants and activity companies for bike/car/coach/canoe hire etc... There is also a lovely castle and an immaculate beach with lots of rock pools to investigate.
Calmac did a brilliant thing which impressed me - they sent me a text in the morning to say that there was a chance that the ferry were booked on to return to the mainland was potentially going to be cancelled so we might want to return on earlier or later ferry. I thought this was excellent service. We did go on the earlier ferry and only had to cut our trip short by one hour.
Caledonian MacBrayne On the ferry we bought a brilliant book called 'Arran for Families'. Its been written by a man and wife who live on Arran from the view point of things that they have enjoyed doing with their kids and grandchildren.. It has great one page descriptions of all sorts of things of interest on Arran and has beautiful child friendly illustrations. We recommend you consider buying this before going if you have kids or if you like an easy to read guide.
Arran for Families book .
Over the two days we spent here we drove right round the island. Our favourite place was a village called Lamlash which is about 5 miles from Brodick. Lamlash reminded us of Nelson (NZ South island) in miniature, in that there are plenty of yachts moored in the bay and many of the buildings looked kind of similar too. Lamlash overlooks Holy Island, which is home to a Buddist community these days. You can visit Holy Island via a small ferry (its a RIB) which will take foot passengers. It costs £10 for adults and £5 for kids returns. Its beautiful.
We visited Arran Distillery, which is a fairly new distillery being built in 1995. They have an amazing selection of whiskys and a gorgeous - and I really mean GORGEOUS - award winning whisky cream liquor called Arran Gold. Needless to say we bought a bottle of single malt and a bottle of Arran Gold. You can join in tours of the distillery and they have free tastings which we took advantage of. Outside at the distillery they have a pile of barrels which they use to age the whiskies in - they are typically Jack
Daniels, Sherry, Port etc... The aroma from the barrels is amazing.
Arran Distillery .
The weather while we were there flicked between glorious sunshine and overcast moody cloud. We managed to drive round most of the island with the top down on the Ninkynonk - yay! Alan still does all the holiday driving bless him. Have to say though - on the second day the windy roads and tight suspension was challenging on the old stomach, especially seeing as how we had partaken of a few Arran Golds and vino collapso the evening before. Felt quite sick after about half an hour, but a
Ginormous portion of beer battered fish and chips and pepperoni pizza in Brodick sorted me out.
There are supposedly amazing standing stones on Machrie Moor on Aran. We were keen to see them and drove past the area they are located twice, but couldnt find the jump off point to investigate. That'll be an activity for next time.
Other things about our trip to Arran
* Arran is home to snakes called Adders which are poisonous if they bite you. Fortunatey we didnt see any.
* Despite Arran jumpers being very popular the world over,
we did not see a single wool shop or Arran jumper shop during our 2 days. Hmmm...
* One of the most popular activities on Arran is hill walking and climbing. There is a peak called GoatFell which is a Viking name meaning 'Hill of the Goats'. Needless to say we didn't do any hill walking. Too lazy.
*There is also an Aran Brewery close to Brodick Castle. It had just closed when we went to visit, however there was a pub next door and we had a half pint of Arran Blonde ale, which tasted smooth and delicious.
*We missed going to Brodick Castle this time as we went to catch that earlier ferry.
Well, that's about it for our little update. For those of you we havent spoken to / seen for a while, we hope you are well and enjoying the summer rain!
Big love,
Eggs. xxx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.236s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 31; qc: 110; dbt: 0.1298s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.4mb
anonymous
non-member comment
Lovely pictures and writeup. Happy to see you're back. I followed you as you travelled a few years ago (pre Beth)!