Culzean Castle

Our reason for traveling to Ayr was to see Culzean Castle. I think it's probably my favorite renovated castle of our visit to Scotland (Mike prefers Stirling). I loved it because of the Robert Adam architecture and particularly because the interior has been so well-restored. It has lots of period furniture, beautifully decorated ceilings, friezes along the walls, and the most impressive display of armory. I mean really, really impressive and displayed in such an original fashion. It's one of those rooms you walk into and just say, "Wow!" They didn't just stack up bunches of guns and swords and put a label on them, the sword blades were cut and fashioned into large pieces of art and the flintlock pistols were displayed in an imaginative way too. The collection of flintlocks is huge, I think they said that only the queen has a larger collection. The kitchen had an ingenious roaster. You know those candle sets where you light the candles and the heat creates a draft that makes the little angels go round in a circle? This roaster used the same principle. A fan was installed in the kitchen fireplace's chimney and a cable and pulley were attached to the fan. When the fan rotated, it moved the cable through the pulley. A long rotisserie basket was attached to the cable and stood in front of the fire, and the basket rotated as the fan turned. Who thinks of this stuff? I thought it was a pretty awesome invention for almost 300 years ago. The castle also produced it's own gas supply in the late 19th and early 20th century. The castle has an amazing oval staircase. A circular shape wouldn't fit, so it was made in an oval shape instead. The stairs have no visible means of support, this is because each individual step is sunk 18 inches into the wall and each stone step rests upon the one below it. If you were to remove any one step, the entire structure would come down. The park surrounding the castle is very large and there is also beach access. Many of the castle windows had wonderful views of the sea.