Five Ferries: Day 8: Ardrossan

Our last full day was spent locating and walking along Machrahanish Beach – long been on Marina’s bucket list – where we saw the “mist rolling in from the sea” as mentioned by Sir Paul McCartney’s Mull of Kintyre.  It really does roll in and out of the sea at the southernmost tip of Kintyre, yet we were in warm sunshine just 5 miles further up the coast!

After that we made our way to Campbeltown to check in and queue for the ferry.   

We had been advised by some fellow campervanners to book for this crossing; they had not been able to get a place on the Ardrossan-Campbeltown ferry the previous week, however our ferry was just half full, though this could be explained by reduced capacity to covid.  We had it booked in any case, as this was a full-sized runs-to-a-timetable route, which cost us £84 – but travelling back to Edinburgh this way cut out 120 miles of busy tourist roads and reduced the driving time by 3 hours.

The weather was perfect for our journey, beautiful sunshine and no wind apart from 5 minutes when we had a shower of rain.  We stood on the outside deck and enjoyed the many views as the landscape unfolded – we even saw some porpoises, guillemots and razorbills.

On arrival in Ardrossan, we spent 2 minutes driving to the Calmac Car Park next to the ferry dock, where we could stay for £5 for up to 24 hours.  We’d done our homework and had already identified an Indian restaurant with good ratings to order our takeaway from,  and it was only a 10 minute walk to collect it.  The Jaipur Indian Restaurant   served large portions of delicious classic dishes and we had enough from our £20.50 meal for 2 for both supper in the van, and our lunch at home the next day!