September 24, 2019 Turnberry and the Bruce!

The Liberty Gazette

September 24, 2019

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: “At the round-about take the SECOND exit,” repeats in my head even though we’ve been back from Scotland almost two weeks. The GPS’s message seems permanently planted in my brain. While recently visiting the Scottish Lowlands, I renewed my familiarity with driving from the right seat on the left-hand side of the road while turning right around traffic circles. A lot of traffic circles. The rental car’s navigation system sounded irritated when I did not follow its prompts. At least I didn’t have to shift gears, thanks to the automatic transmission, somewhat of a luxury in Europe.

Linda was on a mission, and I was the designated driver. She is doing research on a notorious ancestor of hers, one Sir Robert Logan, who provided a great deal of material suitable for an epic play. Today’s destination was the ruins of Turnberry Castle, south of Ayr, and the birthplace of Robert the Bruce, a former king of Scotland, also her ancestor. There isn’t much left of the castle, but it provided an opportunity to see part of the country’s west coast.

A lighthouse built in the 19th century now stands where the castle walls were tumbled down early in the 14th century. But some of the old walls are still visible. We took advantage of a break in rain showers and walked half a mile from the parking area through a golf course. That’s when I discovered this was also a Royal Air Force base, not once, but twice. In fact, the paved path on which we strode cut across the middle of a slab of runway.

The links existed before World War I. When the fighting began, the property was requisitioned and turned into a training base for the Royal Air Corps. Cadets spent three weeks learning to fly and shoot guns in aerial combat. When the hostilities were over, it was reverted to long, rough fairways, soft, manicured greens, and a boatload of sand traps.

During World War II, once again it was enlisted. The RAF’s Coastal Command trained pilots in torpedo-bombers to drop a new kind of bomb, the “Highball,” that bounced along the water into the sides of enemy ships. But they never used it in battle. Later, the RAF based their Consolidated B-24 Liberators here. They carried torpedoes, depth charges, and rockets, for knocking out German U-boats in the Atlantic.

From a small hillock, the runway seemed short. The wind whipped, and the rain splattered. A monument to the lost airmen of World War I overlooked the torrential waters of the Firth of Clyde. A bump of granite that formed a dome over a volcano long ago stuck out of the sea. They call the rock Ailsa Craig.

I imagined heavily laden B-24s lumbering down the hastily constructed concrete runways into windswept skies. I listened for the rumble of their radial engines. I’d much rather hear that than the GPS voice enthusiastic about a roundabout.

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