Description

A must tour for the Burns enthusiast. With the help of an expert tourist guide, explore the Ayrshire scenes that helped form the young Robert Burns, and make him the world’s favourite poet.  Visit his birthplace at Alloway, where you will see the ruined Kirk Alloway, forever associated with his most famous poem Tam o Shanter.  Explore the new Robert Burns Museum, with its unique displays on the poet’s life and works.  See the world-famous Burns Monument and the old Brig o Doon.  Visit Mauchline and the first home he set up with his wife, Jean Armour, then go on to the Bachelors’ Club he founded in Tarbolton.  See the still-working farms where he lived as a young man.

From Edinburgh we head west, via Hamilton and East Kilbride, towards Ayrshire.  From Glasgow we head south past Kilmarnock, where Burns’s poems were first published, and Ayr, “whom ne’er a town surpasses for honest men and bonie lasses”.  At Alloway we first visit the cottage where the poet was born, to find the atmosphere of Burns’s day evoked by audio-visual displays and period furnishings.

We then walk along the Poet’s Path, with its images from Burns’s best-loved works, to Kirk Alloway (where we see his father’s grave) and the Brig o Doon, while your tourist guide recites Tam o Shanter and other Burns poems.  After visiting the Burns Monument, with its Masonic symbolism, and the statues of Tam o Shanter and Souter Johnie, we enter the new award-winning Robert Burns Museum.  After exploring the Museum and browsing in the shop, we have lunch, either in the Museum Café or in the nearbyBrig o Doon Hotel.

After lunch, we head, past Mount Oliphant farm to Mauchline, where we visit the fascinating museum in the house where Burns first set up home with Jean Armour.  After a brief walk round the town, seeing the main sites associated with Burns, we break for tea or coffee, before heading for Tarbolton. On the way we pass the farms of Mossgiel and Lochlie where Burns lived and worked, then visit the world-renowned Bachelors’ Club.

It is now time to head back to Glasgow or Edinburgh.

Throughout the tour your knowledgeable guide will give you detailed information on Burns’s life and works and on the state of Scotland in the poet’s time.  As well as entertaining you with selections from Burns’s poems and songs, he will be delighted to answer any questions you may have.

A must tour for the Burns enthusiast!!!