Ayr to Glasgow

June 24, 2025

We had another 70 km day ahead of us. We had the option of taking the train to Glasgow as ScotRail had lots of local trains and they purported to take bikes. Dave happily reported that his knee was feeling better and he wanted to ride. So, we woke up wanting to get on the road but it was projected to rain through the morning. As we were loading up, the rain really intensified so we sat back down in the Mercure lobby, watched it rain and waited for it to stop, or at least dissipate. We recalled all the other times and rides where we had to sit in a hotel lobby waiting for the weather to improve (Drammen, Saint-Afrique, Cesky Krumloz; it’s a long list when you start thinking about it!)

The Mercure had a luggage cart which as you can see, is really handy for us, especially when we have to bring the batteries up to the room for charging. The elevators, however, were tiny and required a lot cart maneuvering to get it to fit into and out of the elevator.

This photo doesn't show the rain drops, but it was really coming down.

It didn’t exactly stop but lessened so we decided to push on. Riding out of Ayr was pleasant, quite pretty and there was definitely more to this town than we saw coming in. Rain stopped shortly and didn’t resume until the end of the ride.

The ride out of town was wet, but dramatically beautiful.

We got to ride through some lovely neighborhoods.

There was a wonderful promenade with a bike trail. We enjoyed a well-organized cycling route and passed a number of golf courses in this golf-mad area. We rode by Prestwick airport, home to a travel debacle experienced by Dave (before he met me). He was traveling alone with the intention to visit the scotch distilleries in Islay. He used a travel planner who a) had him flying into Glasgow/Prestwick airport by mistake instead of Glasgow International; b) his rental car, however, was waiting for him at Glasgow International (50km away from where he landed); c) his rental was scheduled for July not June when he arrived; d) he was never made aware of having to take a ferry over to Islay; e) was stranded at Prestwick with no rental car and was unable to get to the last ferry that day. It was a mess, to say the least, but he rallied, finagled a rental at Prestwick, booked a lodge half way to the ferry, booked a ferry for the next day and enjoyed one less day of whisky tasting on Islay.

Nope. This is not the airport I was supposed to fly into.

There were very few cyclists out but many people walking their dogs. Unfortunately, a dog stepped right in front of me on the trail and in attempting to avoid hitting her, I fell over in the bank on the side of the trail, being unable to unclip in time to stop. There were three dogs with their two owners and they were very apologetic and we stopped and visited for awhile while I gathered myself together.

Cora offering her apologies to Jill for running into her.

We stopped again down the trail so Dave could administer first aid to my right knee, to match the similar wound to my left knee from my fall in Cork two weeks ago. We are depleting our first aid kit. Later I could tell I banged up a few other places in my body but in the scheme of things, it could have been worse. I carried on. The bad news is that I ripped my rain pants - so Dave may need to do a duct tape repair.

After that we rode another 15 km through various suburban and agricultural neighborhoods and through some beautiful areas of protected woodland, all on cycle trails.

Now here's a gate that makes sense! Protecting us from the train.

After 33 k we were ready for a break. it was cold and the weather had really whipped up and started to rain. Fortunately, in the historical village of Fenwick, we spotted a tea shop and stopped for a late lunch and to warm up. After a cup of tea (Jill)/Americano (Dave) and lentil soups we revived ourselves and had a nice visit with three locals: Jim, our server, Mel and Paul . They were very good ambassadors for their charming village and we had fun chatting about out travels.

The rest of the way into Glasgow was on a cycling “superhighway,” as Dave described it, because it was a fast and wide cycling trail along a busy road. It wasn’t scenic but it was convenient and safe.

Our destination was Glasgow for a stay of three nights. A primary purpose was to get our bikes serviced again. We decided to keep the appointment even though we had had an unplanned servicing in Bilbao. I really wanted to see if they can get a mirror for the right side of my bike. I gave up using the mirror attached to my cycling glasses and have been riding blind on the right for the past couple of weeks, making my rides a little bit uneasy.

We hope to have some time to visit a few sights, since neither one of us has spent any time in Glasgow.

I had booked an Airbnb, which I don’t often do. Hotel lodging was very expensive and Catherine’s flat in the West End looked really cute, plus when I looked at the pictures I spotted a bike in the interior hallway, so I figured she would be fine with parking the bikes inside. As it turned out, she was indeed fine with it, being a cyclist herself.

We arrived very tired having riden through much of Glasgow from the south and through downtown. It was when we arrived at our accommodations that we encountered one of those half hour challenges that is part of why I dislike Airbnb in general. We arrived at the address with no difficulty. Catherine had sent me some instructions on how to get in but when I looked at my emails, I couldn’t locate it. I resorted to the Airbnb site but it said they would have to SMS a message to me to unlock the Airbnb site before I could review any messages. This was problematic because SMS messages don’t work with the e-sim I am using on my phone. I needed to be connected to WiFi first, but I couldn't have that until I was inside. This was particularly frustrating. I had Catherine’s phone number, so we switched from our e-sim setting to T-mobile and tried to call her. We couldn’t get through after a few different tries complicated by our lack of familiarity using British phone numbers. Dave finally figured out that T-mobile didn’t work in this neighborhood. We looked at each other and decided our only option was to go back down to the main road, Great Western Road, find a cafe, sit down and access the internet in order to place a call. We were dead tired and had no extra energy to deal with this. Just as we started to turn our bikes around Dave remembered that WhatsApp will work over the e-sim, and duly plugged her number in and texted her via WhatsApp. Success! She responded right away and came up to let us in, as she lives in the flat downstairs.

The flat is really cute. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.

Today's ride: 70 km (43 miles)
Total: 1,933 km (1,200 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	6
Comment on this entry	Comment	1

Lyle McLeodGood thing you didn’t try to completely wait out the rain, you would be stuck in Ayr for a very long time. We lived in Glasgow from August 1989 through February 1991. It was raining when we got to Glasgow and did not stop until April of 1990. Seriously. Glasgow has changed immensely since then (there was zero bike infrastructure for example) but it was a great place to live albeit a pretty rough place to visit. A lot of my snooty English colleagues used to (derisively) comment that ‘yogurt had more culture than Glasgow,’ but they chose not to see the magic of the place. As the Scots always say, Glasgow is for the Scots, Edinburgh is for the tourists! Hope you enjoy your time there, keep your Gortex handy.
Reply to this comment
1 week ago