Ayrshire has always been a grand place for a drink. Its miners and steelworkers were legendary hardened boozers; Johnnie Walker whisky was first made here; and local lad Robert Burns - Scotland's greatest poet - spent his days, half sloshed, chasing women round its lanes and inns.
But of all Ayrshire's drinkers, its most committed by far was James Boswell: traveller, author, journalist, landowner and debauchee, a man who struggled vainly throughout his life to balance his family's aristocratic expectations with his own artistic and licentious urges. Having written one masterpiece, a biography of his friend Samuel Johnson, and several other notable books, Boswell died, aged 47, ravaged by syphilis and cirrhosis. Thus Scotland lost a great intellectual talent, a friend of Voltaire and Rousseau and a prodigious writer of fine verse and prose.
He was an extraordinary man and now, thanks to Lottery-backed restoration work, you can catch a physical echo of his life by staying at Auchinleck House, where Boswell tried so hard to control his grosser urges and behave like a Scottish laird.
It was an unmissable opportunity. Auchinleck, 20 miles east of Ayr, is one of Scotland's finest mansions, a grand 18th-century pile that echoes the work of the country's great architects, the Adams brothers. And I could share the rooms in which Boswell lived, wrote, and consumed the contents of his voluminous cellars.
The experience is not a cheap one, however. The Landmark Trust charged £2,500 for our week's stay at Auchinleck though, to be fair, its labyrinthine corridors and rooms accommodated our party - seven adults and five youngsters - without strain. The house also has 10 acres of grounds on which previous, now ruined, Auchinleck buildings, a 17th-century mansion and an even older castle, still stand.
We spent days exploring its fern-strewn paths and its rivers, carved deep into the local sandstone. We found an old ice house, caves, vertiginous bridges and a grotto that Boswell used as a summer retreat. It was in this Ayrshire idyll that the young aristocrat grew up, on one occasion romancing a local farm-girl, to his father's disgust. (Boswell senior, a cantankerous Court of Session judge, later moved James from Edinburgh's university to Glasgow's to stop him canoodling with an actress. Boswell promptly ran off to London so he could enjoy the pleasures of the ladies of Soho.)
Such distractions were particularly welcome as there are few other tourist pleasures nearby: Culzean Castle, the Electric Brae, a local road that appears to point downhill but actually faces uphill, and not much else. Only Glasgow, with its bars and shopping malls, 35 miles to the north, offers real alternative enticements.
In any case, Boswell's home was our prime objective and it did not disappoint. It has been lovingly restored by Landmark. With its light, spacious halls and rooms, it is now one of the trust's highlights. In particular, its crimson-walled library, which stretches half the length of one side of the house, accommodated our party after dinner with ease. It was here that Whiggish Boswell Sr nearly came to blows with his son's best pal, the arch Tory Samuel Johnson, over their views about Oliver Cromwell, in November 1773: 'a pair of intellectual gladiators' in action as an aghast Boswell described the encounter. For our part, we used the place to make jigsaws, play cards and listen to CDs, until our party's leader and inspired chief cook, Bryn, put on his Abba and Bonnie Tyler recordings and we all went to bed.
Downstairs, Boswell's morning room has been made into a study lined with the engravings of his life and times and across the hall there is a breakfast room where tired adults could catch a quick doze. Best of all, though, there is Auchinleck's mighty kitchen that has been fitted stereoscopically with matching pairs of ovens, hobs, microwaves, fridges, sinks, cafetieres and kettles. Here various couples, and groups of youngsters, took turns to cook vast dinners. We had roasts, bourgignons, stroganoffs and curries; soups and puddings, mighty cheeseboards, and piles of hors d'oeuvres: all consumed before a roaring fire in Auchinleck's huge dining room, with its views of Arran and its lines of paintings of Boswell's family and ancestors.
Then there was the drink, a defining Auchinleck activity. (In his journals, Boswell recalled a life here of 'deep drinking, appalling hangovers, profound repentance... and deep drinking' - thus setting an example for all journalists to follow over the centuries.) We were even provided with a guide with which to follow the great man's example: his Book of Company, a list of the alcoholic beverages Boswell consumed between 1782, when he become laird on his father's death, and 1795, when he died. Boswell kept the book, in part, to warn himself when he might be going over the top. It was, of course, a total failure.
Take his entry for the night of 16 October 1783. Boswell records that he and six friends consumed 11 bottles of claret, two of other wines, two of Madeira, three of port, and one of rum. The next night, they polished off 11 bottles of claret, three of other wines, three of port and three of rum. (Not much sign of his 'appalling hangovers', I would have thought.) This, to say the least, is drinking on a heroic scale. By comparison, we managed, in a week, to drink 37 bottles of wine; two of gin; one Armagnac; one port; one Pimm's; one sherry; and a few litres of lager. Small beer compared with the intake of the Big Man and his mates. Their titanic consumption should scarcely be surprising, though. They came from Ayrshire, after all.
Factfile
Robin McKie stayed at Auchinleck House, Ochiltree, Ayrshire. It sleeps up to 13 and costs from £1,053 for seven nights through the Landmark Trust (01628 825925)
