Leaving the estate on foot by the gate you came in, cross the road and go to the right, past the back entrance to Belleisle and the golf course on your left.
Turn left through the wooden fence, just opposite Langlands Park and, in about 60 yards, clear of the trees, turn left again towards the 15th tee.
Before reaching the tee you will pass over the modernised stockbridge which crosses the Slaphouse Burn.
The old name for the Slaphouse Burn was the Curtecan. On Timothy Pont’s 17th century map there are no fewer than 3 bridges over the Curtecan, one high up, one near Slaphouse and one at the Bridge House, (on the Doonfoot Road near where the bridge to Belleisle crosses the burn today)
The one on Tam’s road home was a stockbridge, and is referred to in documents relating to the roup of Alloway lands in 1754. On June 7th 1756 the Ayr Council minutes record a payment to John Donald, mason in Ayr, for building a bridge over the Slaphouse Burn, ‘nigh the Slaphouse’, while on June 29th 1757 it is noted that John McClure, the late tenant of Slaphouse, is claiming that to build the bridge the magistrates and Council of Ayr made a road through his grass and corn in the summer of 1755 so that materials might be led to the said bridge conveniently ; “He wants thirty pounds Scots, (50 shillings Sterling), in compensation and is to be paid twenty”.)