Culzean Castle

This week was largely a planning week given that I have 5 weeks left here. So a large amount of my time was spent at the apartment working or planning. Of course I also did my normal things like walking, tea, & going to the weekly prayer meeting. The main notable things I did were Culzean Castle & getting a tad lost on my walk today which led to me shin deep in a stream…

Saturday was the day I visited Culzean Castle with a couple from the coffee shop I regular & 2 of their friends. The day started chill since I am the only early riser of the group going, but quickly turned into a fun memorable day. A lot of the time at the castle wasn’t actually at the castle but on castle grounds. We started with a walk on the shore while on our way to get food at the on-site restaurant (a majority of the party was starving by the time we got to the castle). Once we finished up the much needed food we set off towards the castle.

I tend to hold the view of arriving as early as possible because a lot of the time people don’t want to get up for it. However, in the case of going into the castle 45 minutes before they closed it worked out in our favor. As we approached it started to rain an uncomfortable amount so we were able to take shelter in the castle, which is one of the few buildings in the area. Also, since we were the last people to enter the building, one of the workers whose job is to just watch & answer some questions, took the liberty of essentially giving us a mini private tour. He made sure we found every Lego mini fig hidden throughout the castle & let us know who they were supposed to be. This was a very enjoyable time & probably saved us time that we would have all spent pretending to read the signs so the others didn’t feel like they needed to rush in reading the signs (like most museum trips with college age people).

Once we finished touring the castle we walked down to the swan pond on the estate. Here we met a man & his dog who frequent the pond since they live nearby. When he saw how much we enjoyed his dog he asked us, “Do you guys like animals?” to which we answer yes. I was expecting him to tell us where we can spot different animals in the area, but instead he turned to an angle to reveal his ferret in his hoodie pocket. We all were pleasantly surprised & asked about both his animals for a while. He then told us a way to get to another shore just a little walk down the path, so we set off there.

Upon arriving at the shore, I thought it would be like many of my beach experiences. Walking around, looking for sea shells, or simply standing/sitting while looking at the shore. This group is a bit different than the normal crowd I’m with on the beach. We ended up spending an hour or two climbing rocks, going in caves, & swinging a big bamboo stick around for some reason. During this time we saw a beautiful view of the evening sun peaking through the clouds over the water. The whole thing was more fun than I normally have on the beach.

That is the account of most of the trip to the castle. Now onto the little incident of getting lost in the woods. Today I decided to go on a trail that I had seen many times but have never done. It was rather quickly into my walk I realized this path was not nearly as well kept nor marked as the trails I am used to. Nonetheless I welcomed the challenge, being invigorated by yesterday's adventures of caves & such.

At some point I lost the trail, so I did what any reasonable person would do. Powered up my phone, put in my code, & opened Pokemon Go. I was then able to use the app to locate where the trail was, though it didn’t look much like a trail even when I got back on it. The issue was that the trail was on the other side of the stream & I was not excited about the idea of backtracking to go across the bridge. Instead I found an area with large enough rocks that I should have made it across no problem, but due to a large amount of rain this week, the rocks were very wet & my shoes were covered in slippery mud. I made it half way before I slipped, almost fell over completely but made the executive decision it was better to step into the stream rather than fully fall into it. I made it across safe, just a bit wet from the mid shin down, & the rest is history. I made it home and showered back into my church clothes for the evening survice.