Kelburn Castle, Country Centre and Estate

Oops, wrote this a while back and forgot to publish it! This was from our holiday to Scotland.

The only other thing we went to was Kelburn Castle. It was very good. When we got there they were doing a Viking reenactment which was quite fun to watch. They battled with swords and axes.

Again there were lots of animals. We mistakenly followed a sign to the castle and it took us on a rather long route across the river and back round past the castle. Its not a  good big stoney castle but they have painted the sides of it graffiti style :-\ it looks quite good but a little strange.

They had a nicely tended garden bit I imagine you'd have liked. We never did see how to get in to the castle but we looked at the leaflet when we got back and it would've cost extra anyway. The kids wandered off and we lost them for a couple of mins it turned out they wandered off into a no-entry bit :-( but unfortunately we found them again. There was also a "secret forest " which was rather fun. It was a big maze with various buildings and crazy stuff all in a forest. It was big and took ages to walk around and I don't know if we saw it all. The kids always picked opposite directions so they had to take turns to lead.

Heads Of Ayr Farm Park

We went to the Heads of Ayr Farm Park on our recent holiday to Scotland. Which was nice but drastically overpriced. It was a ten minute walk from the caravan in Craig Tara Holiday Park we were staying in.  We drove, however, so our coats and picnic were nearer.

We got there good and early and the kids played on the adventure playground before it got busier on the equipment later on. The kids found special tokens in the sand to get a prize from the gift shop. David optimistically wanted a £15 wolf teddy but it was only choccy coins on offer.

They had all the animals you'd expect and you could feed most of them. Then there were the smaller ones and they could hold a few. And they had this fantastic Guinea pig town with dozens of pigs living in little buildings.

All quite fun but we paid less than £10 for all of us at the Acorn Farm in Kirkby A few weeks ago. But being right next to a holiday park I can't imagine many families not going to it...

Dean Castle and Country Park

We went to Dean Castle and Country Park which was great and free.

 

It had animals and even a big pile of fallow deer, the buck would even eat out of your hand - we only had grass for him.

 

You could only go in part of the castle but there was armour and weapons for the kids to try on. It absolutely tipped down on our way back to the car which, I suppose, was good timing :-)