Brodick Castle
The Isle of Arran has several small towns, mountains (Goat's Fell being the tallest at almost 3000 feet), beautiful views of the water, and one NTS castle: Brodick. If you planned ahead, you could actually walk to Goat's Fell and back (miles!) by way of Brodick Garden's woodland paths.
This castle was not on our original itinerary. We were feeling a bit overextended trying to reach the little Island of Gigha with its gardens, and the ferries were quite expensive, even taking into account the fact that we would leave our car behind and walk to Achamore House.
So we blew off Gigha and went straight to Arran and arrived on the eastern shore by the middle of a beautiful day. We had only about three miles more to drive before we'd reach our destination for the night, which was the Glen Isle Hotel in Lamlash, so when we saw the inviting drive into the grounds of Brodick Castle, Gardens and Country Park, we pulled in.
One more time we were grateful for our National Trust membership: admission was free so we had nothing to lose by stopping in. And as it turned out, we had a lovely time. Only a few other people were there, the weather was superb, the gardens wonderful, the castle interesting and the woodland paths cool and full of little surprises, chief amng which was the Bavarian Summerhouse.
We found this little gazebo on the side of the steep hill that the castle was perched on. It was tucked into the trees in deep shade through which you could see Brodick Bay.
There was no way I could get a good picture of the whole, the trees were so close together, but the amazing thing was the detail anyway. The ceiling and walls were entirely covered in intricate patterns of pine cones. Yes, pine cones of all shapes, types and sizes (all from these woods?) set into a structure of rough-hewn pine logs (see the panelling in the first of the three details below). Hard to describe, but you can see a bit of the texture.
