Dunure

Today was a gorgeous day, the sun was shining and it was very warm with little to no wind. So we decided to go to a popular little picnic spot a couple miles down the coast to a park in the small town of Dunure.



The kids, Paul, Stuart(Paul's brother) and I explored the ruins of the Dunure castle and the tidal pools. As you can see in the above picture there's a small sea anemone. We found all sorts of different creatures including hermit crabs, small fish, and even a rare sea slug. The kids had a bit of trouble getting around the rocks but they loved searching for sea shells and unique rocks.



We had the opportunity to go inside the castle ruins and explore a little. Records of the castle go back to the 13th century and belonged to the Kennedy family (not to be confused with the American Kennedy's). In it's days, the castle housed a few interesting famous scots. In 1429, James Campbell representing King James 1 of Scotland had a meeting there with John MacDonald representing the lord of the Isles...... inevitably, their little discussion got a little heated and John MacDonald was killed.... so after that, James Campbell was put to death to patch everything up and make everyone happy... but obviously that never went over well.
One of the Kennedy's ruling the castle during the reformation invited an administrator of a local abbey to the castle only to torture him on a spit over the fire until he gave up the estate to the Kennedys.
On the bright side, Mary Queen of Scots visited the castle for a few days in 1563.



So why did the castle get abandoned and why does it look like more than half the castle is missing? Well...... nobody knows why it was abandoned but we do know that useful materials were taken from the castle to help build other buildings, one of the plaques in the castle said that some of the sandstone blocks were taken and used on Cromwell's Citadel in Ayr (the citadel is in ruins as well! and it's really close to where we go to the pool for swimming).


"Beware of the Jaggy Nettles!!!"
They're everywhere and very unsuspecting if you don't know what you're watching out for. These plants sting you if you touch them, they're not poisonous, they just hurt and give you a welt!


This is the view from the highest part of the castle that we could get to, beauty eh?!