Dunure at sunset

I’ve visited Dunure, a few miles south of the town of Ayr, on several previous occasions and I’ve had a particular shot in mind that I wanted to try to get for a while now. I set out earlier today hoping to catch the setting sun illuminating the side of the ruined castle walls.

Structure at the mouth of Dunure Harbour

As a visitor to Dunure, there appear to be really only two places to park your car. You can park your car in Kennedy Park (adjacent to the castle) or leave it in the more limited parking down by the harbour. I tend to prefer the harbour and that’s what I used on this occasion. Just a very short distance from the car I saw this structure at the mouth of the harbour and, although I was here mainly for the castle, I couldn’t resist stopping to take a shot – even though I knew I had only a little over half an hour to go until the sun set…

I would guess that once upon a time a beacon burned on top, to guide fishing boats safely back home…

[NB: click on any thumbnail image to see a larger version…]

This shot of the harbour from the air shows the same structure just right of centre, at the bottom. It also shows the castle in the upper right corner – and that’s where I hurried off to after completing this first shot…

Setting sun on the ruins of Dunure Castle

This is the shot I came for! 😀

(For reference, the sun is setting somewhere over my left shoulder.)

Dunure Castle at twilight

This final shot, on the right, was taken about 40 minutes later, from a position slightly further on from the previous shot. The sun had dropped below the horizon about ten minutes earlier, but had left an attractive pink glow in the clouds in the east.

If you already have some knowledge of the area, you may be waiting for me to recount the gruesome sixteenth century tale of the abduction and subsequent roasting on a spit in the castle’s Black Vault of Alan Stewart, the commendator of nearby Crossraguel Abbey, to make him sign over the title to lands held by the Abbey to Gilbert Kennedy, the fourth Earl of Cassillis – but since many other sites already tell the tale, I’ll simply link to this version which caught my eye. 🙂