Newton Stewart to Ayr

June 23, 2025

After my tattie scone this morning at breakfast, we departed at 10 am. We had a 73 km ride to Ayr. It was 3 km longer than originally planned because Kevin and Kenny in the pub suggested a modification. It was indeed worth the extra kilometers. We rode much of the day north and the east through the Galloway Forest. This region is called South Ayrshire and it was clear that forestry harvesting is a big part of the economy. The roads all day were tiny with little traffic and we saw some lovely vistas.

This interesting old church and graveyard are just outside of Newton Stewart.

We also saw some kits (baby foxes) on the side of the road but they scampered away when they heard us.

After passing the village of Glentrool we veered to the east for the climb that our two Scots in the pub suggested we do. It was dark and cloudy with windswept landscapes and I expected Braveheart to step out at any minute. We had strong winds all day but when we turned onto the climb we had the wind at our back. It was a “why we tour” moment. We passed the Bell Memorial, named for cyclist David Bell, a local who wrote for the South Ayrshire paper about his cycling adventures between 1930 and 1965.

After the climb we had a killer descent and then pulled over on the side of the road to eat a sandwich prepared by the Creebridge Hotel kitchen. Since Scottish buffets don’t really lend themselves to sandwich-making we plan to start asking our hotel kitchens to prepare a lunch for us.

The rest of the day was a ride through fields and ag land and lots of coos (Scottish for cow) and one lone town, Straiton.

On either side of the main street of Straiton, were long continuous lines of houses all connected together. They reminded us of barracks. We looked it up and the housing was built to house mill workers and weavers in the 18th century.

After a few final steep pitches we rode along a ridge and then dropped into Ayr, at the Scottish coast. I was nursing the one bar left on my bike battery, which had been depleted after a long and windy day. Our hotel, the Mercure Ayr, was right downtown, which we learned is not the most scenic part of Ayr. (On the ride out of town the following morning we rode through some lovely parks and all along a coastal promenade). Mercure Hotels are part of the Accor line. Because we are a member we get a small discount and earn points for future stays which they make really easy to use, so it is often an accommodation choice when I am looking at places to stay. Many of them have seen better days and this was one of them. It is a nice business hotel that needs a serious refresh and that was especially true with our room. The carpet needed cleaning and replacing and there was a small dark stain by the bathroom which Dave thought might be “butt scooch” (ie: from a dog bottom). I was so grossed out after he said that that I wore my keen sandals around the room for the rest of the stay. Worse though, was that we were at the end of the hall so the internet was lousy and there was a serious lack of outlets for charging. This was particularly unfortunate since our bike batteries were unusually depleted due to the long day and there was no ability to charge them in the “golf locker room” where we left our bikes. As a result charging everything that night turned out to be an unnecessarily complicated process that involved unplugging the tv to free an outlet as well as juggling our other, and admittedly numerous, devices.

As Jill points out, these rooms need some serious upgrades. Two power outlets (three if you unplug the TV) for the entire room is entirely inadequate given our dependancy on rechargeable electronics. But hey, they do have a telephone and a LAN connection 🙄

We ate at a place down the street, the Treehouse, which was fine but which Dave described as an upscale Chili’s or TGIF. Not surprisingly, we have noticed that wine is suddenly expensive and with a rather lackluster choice to boot. This is not wine drinking country. It would be better if I could start drinking beer! Or whisky! (Dave: I'm working on her to better enjoy whisky. It's an uphill effort.)

Today's ride: 73 km (45 miles)
Total: 1,863 km (1,157 miles)

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