Kelburn Castle Graffiti Castle/ After we had a mini heatwave here in Edinburgh in March, both April and May up until around the 23rd/24th the weather was absolutely crap. Sorry but there’s absolutely no other way to put it, it’s been wet, windy, really cold, everything. April and most of May actually felt like January which for anyone who has visited Edinburgh (or Scotland for that matter) will know is horrible.
But on one really nice day towards the end of May we had really nice weather, bright blue skies, sunny, perfect so we decided if the weather is nice the following day we’d head out. Sadly since Liv and I moved to Edinburgh we haven’t really had the chance to explore Scotland, whether this is because of work, money or whatever, but now I’m just doing the photography full time and Liv is on her maternity leave, we’ve started travelling around a little. On the 24th the weather was absolutely stunning so we jumped in the car and went to Kelburn Castle which is right on the West coast of Scotland.
Kelburn Castle is, to quote Wikipedia “a large house near Fairlie, North Ayrshire. It is the seat of the Earl of Glasgow. Originally built in thirteenth century”.
The two main attractions of Kelburn Castle are it’s graffiti wall and it’s gardens. The gardens are really beautiful and we particularly enjoyed walking around the Sculpture and Historic Trail’s (make sure you don’t bring a pram/pushchair though, it’s really hard work to push one around as we found out) but the graffiti wall is absolutely awesome. The story goes that the concrete facing needed to be replaced to avoid damage to the stonework so the Earl of Glasgow, on advice from his son who is an architect, commissioned a team of graffiti artists to paint a mural on the wall. In person it looks amazing as you can see below.
So would I recommend going? Absolutely! Coming from Edinburgh it took us about 1.5 hours to get there (takes into account driving through almost the length of the city) but the surrounding area around Kelburn is really beautiful and the grounds of the castle are absolutely superb, especially for children. They have a Secret Forest which sounded like fun (although we decided not to walk around this), you can have guided tours through the Castle in September/October (you’ll need to check Kelburn Castle’s website for further details) and you can also go horse riding and have horse riding lessons.
Liv had a quick ride on one of the horses which although lasted less time than expected, she really enjoyed it.
Costs? Not bad. £7.50 an adult, £5.00 for children (although babies get in for free) and for horse riding it was £3.00 for a lap around the paddocks and then £20/£25 (can’t remember exactly) for half an hour’s 1-on-1 lesson.
Kelburn runs a number of events through the summer including a popular music festival featuring DJs and different artists, a Garden Party which will run on the 30th June and 1st July, a Scottish Brazilian Festival on the 18th and 19th August and a Viking Day on the 2nd of September.
I took quite a few photos as you can see below (not the sharpest photos ever as I couldn’t be bothered to us a tripod) but we’ll definitely go back a bit later this year, possibly for the Brazilian Carnival
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