Scotsman rural affairs correspondent Katharine Hay continues her walking tour of Scotland. This time Katharine is on the scenic Ayrshire coastline
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00:00I'm going to just talk a bit about the Ayrshire Coastal Path which I walked on about a month
00:23ago.
00:24So having explored Dumfries and Galloway I walked up towards Girvan on the Ayrshire
00:30Coast and from here I walked along the Ayrshire Coastal Path all the way to Irvine before
00:36heading back inland.
00:39There was a real range of things to see on this path, on this route.
00:44Things that ranged from historical monuments to interesting businesses to quite depleted
00:49towns in terms of business and also Trump's hotel in Turnberry.
00:57So in Girvan that was where I noticed a particular decline in the high street there as with many
01:01towns across Scotland which I've noticed on this walk.
01:04Hayes Bay has made it to Girvan which is on the west coast of Scotland in Ayrshire.
01:10I'm just passing through because I'm trying to make my way up to Ayr.
01:14I've just been working in the public library that they have here and I've just had a walk
01:18through the high street and there's a lot of closed shops, a lot of properties which
01:25have tillet signs in the window and a few that are also boarded up.
01:30So it does look like business is struggling a little bit here.
01:34And I spoke to a hotel owner who said that the decline in fishing, there's a harbour
01:41here and the decline in fishing there has led to economic decline for the town but also
01:48a tour guide was telling me that a lot of tourists used to come through Prestwick Airport
01:54from the States flying in to go and visit Scotland's golf courses but now that's being
02:01less used it means that there's less of a flow of tourists coming through this area.
02:05So it does, I'm only just here passing through but it does give the impression that it's
02:10sort of shedding a skin from a previous more busy and bustly time.
02:17The buildings are really beautiful and it's a very, you can tell it was a popular holiday
02:24spot because it's right here on the coast but a few residents have said that the area
02:31here is really struggling economically.
02:34His way has made it to Townbury which is where Trump has one of his golf courses in Scotland.
02:43The building behind me, he bought it and sort of redeveloped it into what it is now.
02:50It's a bit of a monster of a building.
02:53I went up there last night just to fill up my water and get a drink and yeah, the inside
02:59is just kind of covered in chandeliers and silver teapots.
03:03It was quite a change from being just down the coast in Girvan.
03:12He's got a golf course here and it's very busy, there's a lot of people out and about
03:17playing.
03:20I just camped nearby and was woken up by some golf caddies so I had to kind of move on a
03:26little bit.
03:27But yeah, there's not much around here so I'm reluctant to go and have any more to do
03:33with the hotel so I'm going to just press on and try and find something else.
03:37I also was lucky to stumble across Worley and Gregory Marshall who are the owners of
03:42Blackthorn Salt.
03:45You can only visit their site by appointment only and if you're media but they were very
03:51kind to accept my request very last minute and I visited their business.
03:58What they do is they're the only business in the world that are doing this at the moment.
04:02They have a blackthorn tower which is a tower made of blackthorn held together with beams
04:08made of larch and Douglas fir.
04:10It reaches about two double-decker buses sort of stacked on top of each other, it reaches
04:15that height.
04:16And what they do is they'll trickle tens of thousands of litres of salt water from the
04:21sea down through this blackthorn structure and with the wind and the sun that helps evaporate
04:28the water into a sort of brine which they'll then heat slightly and turn into salt.
04:34It was interesting their headquarters is a vintage railway carriage, a Victorian railway
04:40carriage which they rescued and inside there's a wood-burning stove and after seeing the
04:48wind pick up the day that I was there the couple very kindly offered to let me camp
04:54out in this railway carriage and there were beautiful views of Arran across the water.
05:01It was a wild night so I was very grateful to have the shelter and it was actually the
05:05first time they'd ever let anyone stay in there overnight and it was certainly my first
05:10time staying in a vintage Victorian railway carriage to sleep in.
05:17But putting my sleeping bag up against the fire it was a really nice break from camping
05:21outside for a few days before that.
05:24So before you get to Ayr you can actually visit Culzean Castle, otherwise known as Culzean
05:30Castle, which is where the Kennedy family lived and there's a few other castles dotted
05:35about on the Ayrshire coastal path that you can go and visit.
05:38I would recommend going, it's got a lot of beautiful views all along the coast, it's
05:44quite wild compared to the east coast, there's a lot of vegetation that comes down right
05:50up to the coastline.
05:52So what I found interesting was not far from Ayr I was taken on a tour by a man called
05:58Matt Cross who works for an initiative that helps restore nature to former opencast coal
06:04mining sites and he took me on a drive around some of the former opencast coal mining sites
06:12in East Ayrshire.
06:13It was really interesting because a lot of wader birds, particularly sandpiper and ringed
06:18plover are doing really well here.
06:21The way the land has restored, the way the nature has restored on the land it's created
06:26perfect conditions for these wader birds and there's a story about it on the Scotsman which
06:30you can find under Hay's Way.
06:33If you're interested to follow the rest of the journey you can subscribe to the Scotsman
06:39and all the content that I'm writing and filming and taking pictures of will be under the section
06:46Hay's Way and you can also follow me on my Instagram page which is
06:51at rural underscore cat with a K.