Ferries to Cairnryan
Cairnryan Cairnryan is a small village overlooking Lochryan and is notable today for its large modern ferry port, operated by P&O, which links Scotland with Larne in Northern Ireland. The village appears to approaching ferry passengers as a long, low line of mainly white-harled cottages and houses, set against a beautiful green hillside. History Cairnryan was founded as Lochryan in 1771 when Lochryan House was built at the northern end of today’s village – remodelled in the 1820s, it is still an imposing structure. Until the 1800s it was an important staging post on the coach route to Ayr, with half a dozen inns along the short stretch of coast, and was inevitably haunted by highwaymen. In the 1860s the railway came to south west Scotland and nearly terminated at Cairnryan, which would have turned it into the main port for passenger services to Northern Ireland. But the railway went instead to Stranraer, swiftly followed by the ferry traffic wishing to connect with it. The village has been of vital importance in maritime history. During the Second World War, Cairnryan became Britain’s second most important military port, and three harbour piers and a military railway linking the village with nearby Stranraer were built by the army. Thousands of troops were based locally in military camps. At the end of the war the Atlantic U-Boat fleet surrendered in Lochryan and were anchored here before being towed to sea and sunk, in "Operation Deadlight". For several years following the war, the port was used to load superfluous ammunition onto barges for dumping at sea, a hazardous task, which claimed a number of lives. Ship breaking became the main industry: the great aircraft carriers Centaur, Eagle and most famously the Ark Royal were all sent here for decommissioning. As recently as 1990, Russian submarines were being dismantled here for scrap. More information on Cairnryan’s military heritage has been published by the Stranraer and District Local History Trust. What to See & Do in Cairnryan
