Burns Heritage Trail
The Burns Heritage Trail can be followed by car or on a bus tour. The main destinations are the national poet's places of birth and death, with a few lesser landmarks in and around Ayr thrown in for good measure. Son of a gardener and tenant farmer, Burns was born January 25, 1759, in the village of Alloway, which is now part of the suburbs south of the coastal town Ayr. The Burns Cottage and Museum exhibits family items. Nearby are the church where his father William is buried (and where the haunted creatures of Burn's Tam O'Shanter come to life); the Greek revival Burns Memorial; and the arched bridge over the River Doon: the Brig o' Doon, which has been immortalized, for better or worse, by the Lerner and Loewe musical Brigadoon. Ayrshire towns of Tarbolton and Kirkoswald have other historic sites associated with the Scottish bard.
Farther afield in the town of Dumfries is the Burns' House, where the bard died July 21, 1796. Here are more relics and items, the most impressive of which may be his signature, scrawled with a diamond in a window of the cottage. Twenty years after his death, Burns was moved to a purpose-built mausoleum in Dumfries, where some of his pals were also interred.
