On A Clear Day...The Brown Carrick without a hint of Purple!

Sunday 1st May

A really beautiful day and the last of Mr.Biff's holiday week from work. We check out geocaching.com as we do EVERY day and decide to take ourselves off to Dunure. I have been looking to put a letterbox cache out and also tempted with a multi in Dunure. We also planned to do some maintenance on The Shag Pile Ivy Carpet


as a recent log suggested there was nothing left in it. We also noticed that a cache that had been winking at us for a very long time  On a Clear Day.....    had been temporarily disabled. On reading the logs we saw that it really just needed a new box. So we threw an extra box in the rucksack ......just in case!


On a Clear Day was one of the rare Ayr caches we still had to claim, that and the mystery cache  Purple 
although in order to get the co-ordinates for Purple you have to find  Blue  and  Red which are beyond Glasgow somewhere ... we really should check.



So off we trot, Shag Pile is in pretty good order, not empty as suggested but we topped a few extra treasures in, I really wish people wouldn't just take but exchange, it's only fair. As we head on to Dunure I decide at the last minute to take a detour up the Carrick Hills, well it is a truly fantastic day, most likely our summer! The road is one that freaks me out, single track (though well tarmaced now) and very sharp twisty  turns that put me into 1st gear ... eek SO not my favourite ... if someone comes round the corner now they've had it cause I'm not reversing down round the road for love nor money ... wish I had a 4X4.

The views over Ayr are awesome but on a clear day you have panoramic views over Arran, Ailsa Craig, up the Firth of Clyde and south over the Galloway Hills. Really well worth a visit and I find myself surprised that I've not came up here in such a long time... but then the weatherrrrrrrrrr rarely like today. So we are blessed with sunshine as we head up past the huge radio masts  and satellite thingys, it's really windy but deserted of people and the dogs are very happy to run around over the brush and heather.  

Radio GaGa?

The hike probably takes us a good 20-25 minutes but isn't arduous terrain, but mooshy under boot here and there...Drummer loves this and gets himself truly filthy, squelchy mud between his wee toes. Before long we reach the trig point of the Brown Carrick just a little further to Elephantman's cache. 

Ian, Drummer & Hannah at the trig with Arran in the distance

Mrs.Biffo at the Brown Carrick Trig point

We find 'On a Clear Day' as the previous log had said in a poor way behind a little cluster of rocks. After a bit of a clear out we decided we could hang on to the log book and added some treasures and a geocoin to the nice new camouflaged box.

On A Clear Day with Ailsa Craig in the distance

A quick hike back and we detour to drop my first Letterbox cache off. It's in a nice peaceful spot with some beautiful wild flowers around I spotted wild scabious and those tiny perfect Orchids that I really should find the name of.

Drummer & Hannah oversee the placing of the cache.

From here we decide that, despite not having the clues from Red & Blue to solve Purple, other people have found it without so why shouldn't we try? Two hours later after looking under every gorse bush on the Carrick Hills we concede defeat and with scratched legs and wounded pride we head home. We found the Brown Carrick but not a glimmer of Purple!