pwa wrote: ↑19 May 2023, 2:30pm
Paulatic wrote: ↑18 May 2023, 10:59pm
pwa wrote: ↑18 May 2023, 9:25pm
I will be visiting Culzean Castle in a few weeks time and the access situation there is far from clear. In theory there is a coastal path that goes through the site. But there are also reported to be stroppy National Trust employees demanding that folk pay the not inconsiderable entrance fee to enter the grounds.
Simple really, it’s a core path and if you are on the core path just tell them politely to FO.
https://south-ayrshire.maps.arcgis.com/ ... 07edb4afa4
You need to use the layers menu and choose core paths.
Thanks for that. We will be staying at the caravan park, so whether we have to go through the turnstiles to get to the beach will be a voyage of discovery. It could be a £30+ dog walk
Though my OS app shows me others have walked in on tracks other than by the front gate, so it will be interesting. It could even be fun.
I have visited Culzean many times, though not in the past 5 years or so. The quickest route from the camp/caravan site to the coastal path is probably through the official entry where you might have to pay (unless there's a concession for users of the campsite), but as you surmise there will be plenty of routes enabling you to bypass that, and once in, you're unlikely to meet a NTS emplyee, far less be questioned by one. Away from the formal gardens the grounds are pretty rough semi-natural woodland with no fences etc that I can recall.
As Paulatic has said, in Scotland if you're somewhere you have accessed without difficulty and are being sensible, you don't need to worry about whether you have a right to be there.
ETA (off topic) - it's worth paying once, to tour the castle itself, if you're even remotely intersted in architecture.