Episode 1 – Givan – Cluarantonn

Welcome to the very first episode of Scottish Digest. In each episode we’ll talk about a specific place in Scotland, we’ll tell you whereabouts it is in Scotland, what it’s famous for, what to see and do if you visit, and anything else we think you would like to know. We will also tell you about a specific event or festival that takes place each year there. There will also be a segment on each episode that will give you a personal account of a place in Scotland and recommendations, such as places to eat or accommodation to stay at, which hopefully will give you more of an idea about different places in Scotland, what you can see there and of any upcoming events you can attend there. And, if you’ve not visited Scotland before, we hope these episodes will help you plan your trip. So, now you know what to expect from each episode, in today’s episode we’re going to be talking about Girvan. Girvan, a former fishing port, is a town located on the west coast of Scotland in South Ayrshire, and according to gogirvin.co.uk, is bordered to the east by the Galloway Hills and to the west by long stretches of award-winning beaches, which reach out to the Firth of Clyde. According to Wikipedia, Girvan has an approximate population of 6,450, is about an hour and 13 minute drive south west of Glasgow City Centre and about a 43 minute drive north of Stranraer, which is the main ferry port from Scotland to Northern Ireland. Girvan’s motto is Weave Industry with Truth, which depicts the importance that weaving and industry had on the stability of Girvan, as well as the fact that the residents of Girvan will more than likely always tell you the truth. Girvan is steeped in history, with, according to Wikipedia, the earliest evidence of human habitation in Girvan dating back to the Mesolithic period., and you can find a lot of Girvan’s history in the McKechnie Museum on Dalrymple Street. If castles are your thing then the cliff top Culzean Castle, which started being built in 1777 but wasn’t completed until 1792, is located a 21-minute drive north of Girvan. And according to Wikipedia, Culzean Castle was the former home to the Marquess of Ailsa, who was the chief of Clan Kennedy. And from the pictures that I’ve seen Culzean Castle looks absolutely beautiful, and I do love visiting old castles. Also of note in Girvan is a jail, which is fondly known as Stumpy Jail, due to, well, its stumpiness. According to girvanattractions.co.uk, Stumpy Tower, yet another name it’s known by, is coming up for its 196th birthday, has survived two world wars, stands today as a tribute to the craftsmanship of its Victorian builders, and is still at the centre and heart of Girvan’s community. Inside you will find four floors of exhibitions, if you can make it to all floors as it’s via the original steep stone stairs. Girvin also hosts a variety festivals and events each year, and in 2023 include the Girvan Arts Festival on the 3rd to the 4th of June and the RNLI Girvan Harbour Gala, which takes place on the 5th of August. At this annual Gala you can expect stalls, rides, competitions, rescue displays, and so much more. However, there’s also another event that takes place in Girvan every year and that’s the Tattie Festival. Here’s Zanne from Go Girvan to tell you more.

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So my name is Zanne and I live in Girvan, and I’ve lived here for just under two years. We moved down from Glasgow in the summer of 2021. My husband is a teacher at the local academy. So, delighted that we moved down, because one of my favourite things is to be by the sea, and the beach is about 200 yards from the front door, which is lovely. One of my favourite projects that I’ve been working on with Go Girvan is alongside Girvan and District Attractions who look after Stumpy Jail. So, it used to be called Stumpy Tower. It’s been called Old Stumpy. It’s been called various things. But Stumpy Jail is essentially literally that, it was a jail for the town. It’s a really unique little building. If you’re driving into Girvan it’s one of the first things you see at the crossroads when you hit the lights, they’re literally the only set of lights in Girvan. It’ll be right in front of you. And it used to be part of this bigger complex of buildings and they all burnt down, and Stumpy was the only thing that remained. It dates back to 1827. I think it started to be built in 1825 and it was finished in 1827. So it was a jail for a long time. And then, I think sort of post-second world war, early 50s, I think it was no longer used in that capacity, maybe even before that to be honest. And it’s kind of been used for various other little bits and pieces over the years. But what we’re doing now is we’re in the middle of a refurb at the moment, where we’re recreating its identity as a jail to remind people this is what it was. It’s got three cells in it, so it’s a tall tower-like building and three of the floors are jail cells, and then the bottom floor sort of the entryway. And there was an old doorway that used to connect to a courtroom which burnt down, but you can still sort of see where the prisoners were held while they were waiting to go to court to be tried for various things. It’s an incredibly fascinating history. It’s also got a bell tower in the top of it and a clock, and the clock has just been refurbished so that it’s chiming again for the first time in quite a long time. Everyone’s very fond of Stumpy. You know, it’s very indicative and reflective of Girvan in that it’s a little bit quirky, unusual, but it’s also really interesting and, you know, everybody knows about it and everybody, you know, loves it basically. So, really lovely to live here, really wonderful to be here. And one of my other favourite things about Girvan is the local community, who are all incredibly active and incredibly busy doing lots of exciting things, including Girvan Tattie Fest. So, Girvan Tattie Fest is a celebration of the Ayrshire Epicure tattie, which is grown right here in and around in the ground of Girvan. Ayrshire epicures are quite distinctive tatties. So, that’s one of the first questions is, why are you celebrating one potato? But it’s quite a distinctive tattie. They’re soft, they’re slightly sweet, they’re a new potato, they’re a little bit salty thanks to the sea air and the salty fields that they’re grown in. They were traditionally fertilised with seaweed that was taken straight out of the sea of the beach and dragged up onto the fields. They don’t do that anymore for ecological reasons, but they still use quite frequently a seaweed fertiliser, like a powdered one to go on top so they have that nice salty taste. Their skin is really easy to bruise because it’s so papery thin, so it’s that really nice kind of thin new potato skin. So, because of that they’re also sewn and harvested by hand where possible. So they’re quite unique in the way that they’re looked after. So epicures have been grown around this region for quite a long time, and we thought it was high time that we celebrated that connection between Girvan and the humble potato that so many people love in this area. So, when the potato was first harvested in June, there’s quite often a sort of wee battle as to who can get the first ones, which is always good, and there’s always a wee buzz that goes around the town that tatties are out, the tatties are out! So, to celebrate that we created Girvan Tattie Fest. So, this is our version of Tattie Fest. It was held once before a while back now, but our first version was held last year in June 2022, but actually it started in March of that year, which is when Girvan early growers, who are a collective of farmers who grow the tattie in the region, they donated a few trays of seed tatties to be grown and harvested by the community in various community groups. So, Go Girvan, who I work for, we shared the seeds tatties out to the community garden, to Girvan Academy, to Thriving Communities, Recovery Ayr, Biosphere Bikes, we took some ourselves, and I think a few others had them as well, and we were taught how to plant the seed tatties and take care of them by the volunteers in the community garden, and then in June they were harvested by all the groups and we cooked them up into various tasty dishes. So, everything from potatoes stews, potato curries, tattie scones, lots of different iterations of potato dishes, which is good if you like potatoes. And these dishes were then given out to the community for free at Tattie Fest, in the community garden and also throughout the town. And not just to the community but to any visitors that came along as well. So, alongside the food, we also had live music in the community garden, and that day, to honour the epicure, all of the bands that played changed their names to something tattie related, which was fun. Girvan Academy held a poetry competition so the kids all wrote poems about the tatties and then they recited them at the garden, and that was sponsored by ScottyBrand, who are a big producer distributor. So, they came along and donated some prizes and were really involved in it. We had nature talks that were provided by South Ayrshire Council Rangers. And we had lots of other family friendly things going on in the garden. But elsewhere in the town we had stalls selling crafts and produce, we had arts and crafts workshops run by the local arts group CRAG. So, they did things like t-shirt printing with tatties and those sorts of things, I mean anything we could do with a tattie we did. We had history talks, we had the local History Society came along and talked about the relationship between Girvan and the tattie. We sold potato themed merchandise in the tourist information point. And the tourist information point is a volunteer-run, volunteer-led initiative in Girvan that’s been going on for about ten years, so we used that as a sort of almost box office for the festival as well to drive people through there so they could see what else Girvan has to offer. So this year we’re building on that success. Tattie Fest is taking place again on June the 17th. We’ll have live music, we’ll have tattie howkin, so that is harvesting tatties from the ground the sort of traditional way, we’ll have free food again, arts, crafts and even an Alpaca trekking experience, which I’m very excited about. And there is a link, I swear there is a link. So, the company, it’s a local business who run the Alpaca trekking and they’re called Little Peru, and they’re a family-run business, and, of course, potatoes were originated from Peru, so I took it as an opportunity to make a link. So, we’ll have free Alpaca trekking and an Alpaca wool workshop as well for children to attend. And there’s no cost involved with any of that. We’ll have stalls selling goods again, including tatties by the community gardens, so we’re hoping to get a bit of a farmers market going, and you might even see an appearance from our mascot named Tattie Anna, named by a member of the public. And Tattie Anna was designed and made by our local arts group. So some poor soul has to wander around the town in a giant paper mâché tattie outfit. So you can find… If you keep an eye on our website www.gogirvan.co.uk you can find out all the details that will be released in the next couple of weeks or so about Tattie Fest. And you can also find out more on our social, so we have a Facebook and Instagram just search for gogirvan on there. And we’re really hoping… Obviously everyone is invited to come along and help us celebrate the Ayrshire Tattie, and we look forward to shining a light on this humble food which has a really long history in Girvan, but also a really important connection with the local community here.

Dawn Young – That sounds like a really smashing day out. Thanks for telling us about the Tattie Festival Zanne. You can find more information about the Tattie Festival, other events taking place in Girvan and more about Girvan at gogirvan.co.uk.

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Continuing with our Girvan themed episode, Susanne from Adventures Around Scotland, whose hometown is Girvan, is going to give you some personal stories and recommendations, for those of you who would like to or are planning to visit Girvan.

Hi there, I’m Susanne Arbuckle, founder of Adventures Around Scotland travel blog, which features some of the lesser things to do around Scotland. I’m also a travel writer, digital content creator, itinerary planner and lover of all things Scotland. Today I want to share some of my recommendations for things to do in my hometown of Girvan. For those of you that don’t know, Girvan is located on the south Ayrshire coast and it’s a typical seaside town. It’s popular with visitors because it has a lovely beach, which is approximately two miles long. It also has amusement arcades, fish and chip shops, and you can even hire out pedaloes on the boating ponds for the full seaside experience. But I want to tell you about a couple of other things that you might not have heard of and I think are worthwhile doing whilst you’re in the town. So, Girvan itself is nestled between the sea and the hills, so as you can imagine there are lots of opportunities for exploring outdoors, and there are a number of walking trails which begin in Girvan, and the couple of them are hill walks, popular hill walks including Byne Hill, which sits at the southern end of the town. However, I want to tell you about one of the smaller hills which I think gives a great reward for not so much effort and that is Dow Hill, which is actually spelled d-o-w like Dow but it’s pronounced doo. So, you can reach that from a walk at the edge of town, and a short walk up will take you to the summit where there was an ancient hill fort at one time. Now there is not much of that remaining but there are fantastic views of the surrounding landscape out to the hills, across the town of Girvan, but the most popular view is out across the Firth of Clyde, across Ailsa Craig to Arran, Mull of Kintyre in the distance, and even the coast of Northern Ireland on a nice day. If you prefer to explore by bike then there is a local social enterprise called Biosphere Bikes that rents out various different options, including electric bikes, and we have a traffic free promenade in Girvan, so they have a couple of fun options which are ideal for going up and down the promenade, including go-karts for kids and family buggies which seat four. They also have beach wheelchairs and a beach stroller to help make the beach at Girvan as accessible as possible. And if you are interested in exploring by bike, then I can recommend booking on a tour with The Biking Explorers. Paul, who runs The Biking Explorers, will take you out into the surrounding landscape to some of the fantastic viewpoints around the town, but he will also include lots of local stories and stop off at some of the historic attractions on the way. So that’s definitely something to consider if you enjoy cycling. And of course being by the sea there’s options to get out on the water, so Adventure Carrick is a local activity provider which offers stand up paddle boarding, sea kayaking, coasteering. And once you’re back on land, if you’re looking to sharpen up your axe throwing skills they will be able to help you with that too. So in the town itself there are some nice gardens and a few historic attractions and a local museum. I would recommend heading to the tourist information point to find out more about the attractions in the town, including their opening hours and where you can find them. The tourist information is manned by volunteers and, amongst the many other things that I do, I also volunteer there, so you might even get some tips of me in person if you pop in. One of the places I would say that a lot of visitors miss that is worth stopping by is Orchard Gardens, it’s a lovely little peaceful spot just in a quiet part of town, so, if you’re looking to get away from the hustle and bustle of the beach front and the harbour front then that’s definitely the place to head to. And of course after all that adventuring you’re probably thinking you will need somewhere to refuel, my favourite local café is the new Cafe Royale, it caters for all different dietary requirements including vegan, gluten free, and the staff will go out of their way to adapt any dishes if there isn’t something on the menu that’s suitable already. They’re also dog friendly and even have a menu for dogs. So they really do welcome all of the family. And I know that Tattie Fest has already been mentioned in this episode, but a couple of other festivals coming up in Girvan that you might want to add to your summer diary is the Girvan Arts Festival and the Lowland Gathering. The Lowland Gathering is a bit like Highland Games but obviously Girvan isn’t in the Highlands but it is effectively a lot of the same things that you would expect to find at a Highland Games, including heavy events, pipers, Highland dancing etcetera. So, that’s some of the really popular annual events in the Girvan calendar. So, I hope that’s given you a little bit of inspiration and a few ideas of things to do on a visit to Girvan. If you’re looking for more recommendations of things to do in Scotland, you can find them on my travel blog www.adventuresaroundscotland.com. You can also find some of my other tips on social media, which as on Instagram and Facebook at Adventures Around Scotland. And I look forward to sharing more of my tips in the next episode.

Dawn Young – And there you have it. We hope today’s episode has given you an insight into Girvan and what is available to do and see there, from the history of Stumpy Jail to the award-winning beaches and the annual events, it really does sound like a fantastic place to visit. You can find all links to what I’ve talked about today in the show notes or from cluarantonn.com/scottishdigest. That’s c-l-u-a-r-a-n-t-o-n-n.com/scottishdigest. If you have plans to visit a specific place in Scotland or if you would like help or advice in planning your trip to Scotland, then please visit adventuresaroundscotland.com where you will find a host of information about where Susanne has visited and what she has experienced, as well as Susanne’s contact details if you would like further advice or information. We really hope you have enjoyed the first ever episode of Scottish Digest, and we would love for you to join us next time, where we will focus on another beautiful part of Bonnie Scotland.

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Scottish Digest is a production of Cluarantonn