About

About Ayr Visit

An independent guide to Ayr for visitors, residents and anyone who needs something in town. It is not run by South Ayrshire Council, VisitScotland or Destination South Ayrshire.

Where the listings come from

OpenStreetMap. Most listings come from OpenStreetMap, the free map that people edit: 974 records as of 22 October 2026, with places mapped twice merged into one listing. Its data is © OpenStreetMap contributors and available under the Open Database Licence. The listing data this site publishes in places.json is under the same licence.

NHS open data. GP practices, pharmacies and NHS dental practices come from Public Health Scotland open data (GP Practices and List sizes July 2026; Dispenser Details - July 2026; Dental Practices March 2026). 13 of them were not on OpenStreetMap and were added from this data. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Postcodes are placed on the map with postcodes.io (OS Code-Point Open).

Food hygiene data. Cafes, restaurants, takeaways, pubs and hotels are matched with the Food Standards Agency food hygiene rating data, which South Ayrshire Council publishes under the Food Hygiene Information Scheme (fetched 22 October 2026). Each food place shows its latest inspection result. 74 food places were not on OpenStreetMap and were added from this data. Licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Websites and photos. Websites come from OpenStreetMap first. Chains and landmarks that OpenStreetMap links to Wikidata get the official website recorded there. For listings with none, the web was searched, and a site is shown only after it was opened and found to show the business's name and Ayr, its postcode or its phone. Every website link is tested, and one that no longer answers is not shown. Photos come from Wikimedia Commons, many of them taken for the Geograph project. A photo is used only when its own title names the place and it was taken close by, and only under a free licence. Each one is credited below.

Hand-written entries. The history, sights and walks are written for this site from the sources listed on each page: Historic Environment Scotland, Canmore, the National Trust for Scotland, the council, the organisations that run each place, and Wikipedia. Each fact was checked against its source on 22 October 2026.

Shops' own pages. The shop list for Ayr Central follows the centre's own shop and dining pages. Some supermarkets' opening hours and phone numbers come from their own store pages, read on 23 October 2026, where the map had none. The retail parks list the shops inside their outline on OpenStreetMap. Each listing names its source.

Care homes, care at home and childcare. Care homes, care at home services, day services, nurseries and after-school clubs come from the Care Inspectorate's datastore (as at 31 August 2026), checked against its daily care service directory, under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Each page shows the latest grades and links to the inspection reports. Childminders, children's homes and small homes for disabled adults are left out, because they are people's own homes.

Live data. The Live page and the home page show weather, sea and tide from Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0), planes from adsb.lol (Open Database Licence), ships from AISStream, and the space station's orbit from CelesTrak or ARISS. The site asks them through its own server, so these services never see visitors' addresses, and one answer is shared by everyone for a few minutes. Routes from Ayr railway station come the same way from the OSRM servers run by FOSSGIS, using OpenStreetMap data. The 3D hills on the live map come from Mapterhorn, and the ferry routes from OpenStreetMap. Alerts come the same way, as issued: weather warnings from the Met Office, flood alerts and warnings from SEPA, road notices from the Ayrshire Roads Alliance, and trunk road incidents and roadworks from Traffic Scotland, which Transport Scotland publishes as open data under the Open Government Licence. Live train, bus, ferry and flight times are on the operators' own sites, which the Live page links to.

Play parks and events. Play parks come from OpenStreetMap; most have no name there, so each is named after its park or street. Every event has its own page with what it is, who runs it and their website, checked on the organiser's own page.

Add or fix a listing

This guide reads OpenStreetMap, so the fastest fix is there, and it helps every other map app too.

  1. Find the place on this site and open its page. At the bottom, follow Fix it on OpenStreetMap. For a place that is missing, go to OpenStreetMap at Ayr.
  2. Create a free OpenStreetMap account, then edit the name, address, phone, website or opening hours. OpenStreetMap's beginners' guide shows how.
  3. If you would rather not edit, leave a note at the right spot with Add a note. Local mappers pick notes up.

The guide's data is refreshed from OpenStreetMap whenever it is rebuilt.

Privacy

This site sets no cookies and runs no analytics or adverts. It remembers your light or dark choice in your browser's own storage, and an alert you close for the rest of that visit, nothing else.

Your browser fetches some things from other services: fonts from Google Fonts, the map library and the orbit library from jsDelivr, map tiles from OpenFreeMap, 3D hills from Mapterhorn, and photos from Wikimedia. Those services see your IP address, as with any web request. Near me on the Explore page asks your browser for your location only when you press it, and the location never leaves your device.

Photo credits