Places to explore in East AyrshireScotland · Southern Scotland

East Ayrshire is inland country, a landscape of pastoral river valleys giving way to bleak moorland along its southern and eastern edges. The River Ayr rises in these hills, and the River Ayr Way follows it down through wooded gorges and old mining villages towards the coast. Loch Doon, the largest freshwater loch in the south-west, lies among the heather uplands near the Galloway border. History runs deep here. Loudoun Hill, a volcanic plug rising from the plain, saw Wallace and later Robert the Bruce defeat English armies. The county keeps its castles too, from Dean Castle near Kilmarnock to the conservation village of Sorn.