Today we moved on from our lovely beach camp. It was sad saying goodbye to our new friends. They even offered us some more mackerel to take with us. We gave them a rockmelon, then were on our way.

Our first stop was the quaint seaside town of Portpatrick. It was a really pretty place, with colourful houses around the harbour and lots of pubs and cafés.

And there were shops here. I went a little mad buying stuff.

But I really did need jandals, a raincoat and a puffin.

My justification: no more flip-flopping around in my clown jandals, I can now go out for walks when it’s raining (it does that a lot up here) and, most importantly, I have a puffin to join my ever-increasing stuffed toy collection on the dash.

We thought about having a pub lunch, but I really just fancied a Tesco sandwich meal deal. And there was one in the next town.

But when we got to the next town, we couldn’t find the Tesco and ended up in Lidl instead, where we bought some bread and cheese. That would do for lunch.

Then it was a bit of dual-carriageway driving on our way to our next stop. We didn’t exactly know where this was, but I found a spot for the night and we were heading there.

But when we arrived, we drove through a nuclear power plant, which seemed really creepy. There were nuclear signs all over the place and a big barbed-wire fence and security, and I pretty much decided we wouldn’t be staying there before we even arrived.

But when we got to the carpark at the end, it was a beautiful spot overlooking the loch, which is basically a fjord. Then we decided we would be staying there!

It turns out the power station is actually disused and in the process of being decommissioned. Now it just has to sit there for 50 years until it’s safe to dismantle the reactor.

We saw a castle way off in the distance and a coastal path leading to it. So we followed it. There were towering cliffs on our left that reminded me of Kairakau Beach in Hawke’s Bay.

Turns out this is part of the Ayrshire Coastal Path, and it was an absolutely gorgeous walk. Along the way we saw people stopping and looking out over the loch. So, as you do, we did the same.

Then we saw what they were looking at. Dolphins! And apparently they saw a whale out there too. So we’ll be keeping an eye out for those.

After about 30 minutes we arrived at the castle we’d seen, and there was a little township there, with houses. And then we wandered back.

For dinner we had marinated pork, rice and salad. It was really nice.