Our easy-to-use website contains details and locations of places to visit around this area. Please select from:

	Places to Stay: Bed and Breakfast Hotels and Guest Houses Pubs with Accommodation Self Catering
	Places to Eat and Drink: Cafes, Coffee & Tea Shops Pubs serving Food Restaurants and Bistros
	Places of Interest: Places to Visit
	Gardens Centres: Garden Centres/Nurseries
	Specialist Shops: Antiques & Restoration Arts and Crafts Fashions Gifts Home and Garden Jewellery Food and Drink Shops

Alloway

Alloway is one of the iconic places on any Robert Burns journey of exploration. It was here, in 1759, that Scotland’s national poet was born in a long, low thatched cottage that his father built with his own hands. Burns was not the uneducated “ploughman poet” from the peasant classes that his more romantic admirers would have us believe. His father was a tenant farmer, and although not well off, still managed to employ workmen and serving girls on his farm. Today, Burns Cottage is a place of pilgrimage with people coming from all over the world to pay their respects. Within the grounds of the cottage is the Burns Museum containing many of his manuscripts, letters and possessions, including his original manuscript for Auld Lang Syne.

Burns himself was a highly educated man for his time, thanks to his far-sighted father. He knew his Classics, he could speak French and some Latin, he could read music, he took dancing lessons, and he could play both the fiddle and, surprisingly, the guitar. When he went to Edinburgh in later life, he was possibly better educated than some of the gentry who patronised him. Two of his sons, James Glencairn Burns and W. Nicol Burns, attained the ranks of Lieutenant Colonel and Colonel respectively in the British Army.

At one time, Alloway was a small country village. Now it forms part of Ayr, and is full of large, impressive houses which illustrate the relative affluence of this part of Ayrshire.

Alloway Kirk is where Robert’s father, William Burns, is buried, and it was the main setting for the poem Tam o’ Shanter. It dates from the early 16th century, but even in Burns’s day it was a ruin. Across the road, within some beautiful gardens, is the Grecian Burns Monument, built in the 1820s. Inside is a small museum.

Spanning the Doon is the graceful Brig o’ Doon, a single arched bridge dating from the 15th century or possibly earlier. It was across the Brig o’ Doon that Tam o’ Shanter was chased by the witches he disturbed in Alloway Kirk. However, he managed to gain the keystone of the bridge and escaped unharmed, as witches cannot cross running water. In Burn’s day the bridge lay on the main road south into Carrick, but a newer, wider construction now carries traffic south.

Across the road from Alloway Kirk is the Burns National Heritage Park, a visitor centre with two audiovisual shows within its large auditorium. One illustrates Burns’s life and times, while the other, the Tam o’ Shanter Experience, recreates what happened to Tam o’ Shanter after he left the inn and made his fateful ride south from Ayr.

East of Alloway is Mount Oliphant Farm (private) to which Burns and his family moved when he was seven years old.