As told to Kaz Miller.
I moved to Stranraer for the ferry. In 2011 the ferry moved to Cairnryan. That is the whole joke and I have heard every version of it, so you may as well get yours in now.
It made sense for the operators. Six miles up Loch Ryan, deeper water, faster turnaround, straight onto the A77. What it meant for the town was that the thing at the end of the main street stopped being the reason anyone came. When a ferry terminal is in your town centre you get foot passengers — people with an hour to kill and money in their pocket. Move it six miles and everybody drives past on the dual carriageway instead. Nobody driving to a ferry has ever stopped for a look around.
For a few years it was grim. Shops shut. The harbour sat there. If you had asked me in 2014 whether I would still be here, I would have laughed at you and then looked at the house prices and stopped laughing.
What changed
The marina came. The oyster festival came, which is a proper festival now and not a man with a table. They did the waterfront up. There is a bike route. The sailing club will take anybody who turns up looking hopeful. It is not booming — I am not going to sit here and tell you it is booming — but the direction changed, and when you have lived through the other direction you notice.
“A town that loses its reason for existing either goes under or finds another one. This one is on its second attempt and it is going better than the first.”
Dan Kowalski
The chips
Now. The chips.
I have eaten chips in every town between here and Aberdeen and I will defend this position at any hour. The chip in the south west is cut thicker. That is not a small detail, it is the entire architecture. A thick chip holds heat, so it is still hot at the sea wall four minutes later, and it goes fluffy inside rather than turning into a crisp with ambitions.
Fry it in beef dripping if you can get it. Salt at the counter, not at the table, because the salt needs the steam to stick. Vinegar is a matter for the individual and I do not judge. Anyone putting curry sauce on the top rather than in a separate tub is making a structural error and will find out about it in roughly ninety seconds.
The other thing about the chip shop is that it is open in February. Half of what a tourist town puts up for the summer is shut by October, and a place that feeds people all winter is doing something for the town that a seasonal ice cream hut is not.
Should you come
Yes, and stay a night rather than driving through on your way to the boat. Walk out to the castle, do the loch shore, eat at the harbour. Come in September when the water is at its warmest and the crowds — such as they are — have gone.
And when someone tells you the ferry left, do not say anything clever. We have heard it. I made the joke myself at the top of this piece and I am allowed, because I was the one standing on the pier.
