A weekend away

I decided that it was time I had a weekend away, and I bought myself a weekender ticket for the Kirkmichael International Guitar Festival [3-5th June 2005]! I booked myself into a lovely Bed and Breakfast place in the small village of Turnberry and headed down to Ayrshire in the late afternoon. It was lovely to see the Firth of Clyde laid out before me in the sunshine, but I didn't have a lot of time to spare, so checked in at the B&B and then headed for the small village of Kirkmichael. This is the 6th festival, and I have attended two others in 2002 and 2003. I arrived at the large 1000 seater Marquee just in time for the start of the 4Martins concert. First out was Martin Carty, and English 'folk' musician, he was followed by Martin Taylor, playing Jazz acoustic[who first came up with the idea for the festival - as it is his home village and all the people he mets over the world usually want to come and visit the place!], He was followed by Spanish legen Juan Martin, with a fantastic flamenco style set. After a short interval, Martin Simpson gave us a set [Blues/folk/rock/mixture - hard to place really]. Finally all four of them came on and played together giving us all a terrific evening of wonderful music....a taste of things to come!! I decided to go along to the Festival club afterwards as some friends of ours were playing. Swing Guitars are a pair from Glasgow who play in the Django Rhienhart style, but they have their own compositions as well as a few well known ones! A really excellent evening. I didn't get back to my lodgings however until nearly 3 a.m. as I got 'stuck' behind a long, wide slow-moving convoy heading south on the main road [ the only road at that point!]. It could have been the parts for a large Wind generator or part of a plane - hard to tell in the dark!!
I took a few photos on my break and I will include more shortly, but for now this is the view from just beyond the entrance to the Culzean Castle Estate [ A National Trust for Scotland property]. The island in the distance is Ailsa Craig - the remains of an ancient volcano (the 'plug' from inside the cone. It is famous in these parts for producing the stones for Curling Stones - a Scottish sport. It is also known as Paddy's Milestone and many ships from the clydeside shipyards did their sea trials using it as a marking post for speed times etc.