I don’t know how, but when I was living up in Ayrshire last year I totally neglected to post on my favourite UK fish and chip shop, the Wee Hurrie in Troon.
On our recent visit to H’s mum T, this was the first place we headed after our train reached Ayr, and I realised I had to rectify this terrible error. So with the year-old pics I had ready and waiting, let me try to make amends.
I’ve often thought that if I worked in food production in any way, making cheese would be the thing for me. That or baking cakes for a teashop where presentation was low on the list of priorities.
I’ve been to cheese festivals, seen umpteen programmes about how cheese is made, eaten I have no idea how many different cheeses, and even wasted a couple of hours messing around and making a song about it (I know…I’m not sure what came over me). However I’ve never actually made any.
I have recipes for soft cheeses kicking around, and keep meaning to try them, but until I do, I’m going to content myself by supporting the industry and eating yet more cheese.
That’s why I was thrilled to come across a new local cheesemaker earlier in the year: Barwheys Dairy.
While down south sunny days and unseasonal heatwaves have been occurring, up here we have been having a lot of rain, broken up by grey skies, strong winds and the occasional burst of hail.
Noting the potential arrival of a single sunny day, I reserved it for another food tour, and some research and a print-out later, I was in the seaside town of Troon.
I have only been to Troon a few times before, and never into the actual town. Instead I’ve gone to the harbour to Wee Hurrie, a great fish and chip shop that fries while you wait, and the neighbouring McCallum’s Oyster Bar, where I eschewed oysters in favour of some wonderful fish. I really must write about them sometime.
However though the town itself is small, it’s definitely worth a saunter round, followed by a bracing walk along the beach to burn off a few cake calories.
I live not too far from the Turnberry Resort, which is beautifully situated on the Ayrshire coast overlooking the Ailsa golf course.
It is a very luxurious place, with room prices retailing outside the reach of normal man. Now that H is working, I selflessly thought it would be the perfect place for him to take me on a date, and luckily for me, he agreed.
As most of the wonderful-sounding restaurants fall into the same “you don’t have to be rich to come here, but…oh who are we kidding, you do” bracket as the rooms, I felt the noble thing to do was to opt for afternoon tea, which was still pretty jaw-dropping at £26 a head.
When I moved to Ayrshire, one of the things I was most looking forward to was finding new places to buy and eat delicious food.
My first port of call was Ayr, and I’ve put together a walking tour for any foodies who might be visiting the town and want to know where to go.
For this tour I’ve only focused on places around the centre of town, south of the river. There are other places outside this area that I want to look into in the future, as well as many interesting places to eat in, which I hope to get to sometime.