ONE of Ayrshire’s most popular family attractions faces a constant headache caused by vandalism, fly tipping and anti-social behaviour.

Fed up bosses at Culzean Castle discovered a ripped-up kitchen dumped at the entrance of their park waste disposal centre last week.

The shocking find was just one in a long list of incidents with careless fly-tippers helping themselves to the park’s waste units.

Gareth Clingan told the Ayr Advertiser: “One of the park rangers came in and discovered it. We had been aware of things in skips that have not come from the park, bed frames, furniture etc that hasn’t come from any of our properties.

“We think its been going on for years so we recently took the decision to just lock the gates so no one except authorised staff could get in.”

Ayr Advertiser:

But despite the action taken to prevent rogue waste ending up in the skips, the fly-tippers just dumped the broken up kitchen at the door.

Gareth added: “We pay over £20,000 a year for commercial waste and we are a charity.

“It’s just sad it’s a country park people come here to enjoy themselves. You don’t want to be tidying up the mess before people come up here, but that’s just what we are having to do.”

If someone can drive all the way up here to dump their rubbish then they can drive all the way to their own dump.”

As well as fly-tipping, vandals have been targeting the children’s play park, and graffiti was found inside the caves, a popular visitor attraction.

Gareth added: “Increasingly we are having more issues with vandalism on the site. Every weekend for the past few months.

“They have been breaking into the playpark, cutting up wooden ladders. They are clearly using tools to do this. It looks like it’s some kind of saw or a grinder.

“They will break part of the fence to get in. We are the ones who have to fix that. Generally speaking, they will come in and usually just play on the equipment, but this has started recently and we can’t work out why.”

Bosses are also noticing a spate of “boy racers”, with Gareth saying that they perform “doughnuts” in the car park as well as rally about.

Gareth fears that the only solution to the problem is to completely shut the park down over night but he is hoping that visitors or locals can help to identify the culprits.

He added: “What we will have to end up doing is just putting barriers in place and shutting them off.

“It’s disappointing that people are continuing to do these things. It’s a lot more work for us and if anyone knows anything about what’s going on, we would hope they would let us know.”