Distance cycled: 82km

Cost of the new Robert Burns birthplace museum: £21 million

Distance a miniature book of Burns verse travelled into space: 5.7 million miles

Number of ales sampled: 3

Undeterred by the gusting wind of Hurricane Katia, me and my cycle buddies I met on the ferry from Belfast to Stranraer cycled north to Ayr. I'm not going to lie, it was miserable but somehow cycling with three people divides the misery by three, making it a lot more bearable. The boys caught a train to Glasgow and since the weather had really set in I checked into a B&B in Ayr. The deluge of rain meant it was perfect movie weather so I stayed up and watched Batman Begins. In the movie there's a scene where Bruce Wayne says, "As a man I am flesh and blood, I can be ignored, I can be destroyed but as a symbol I can be incorruptible. I can be everlasting." It got me thinking about the legacy left behind by Robert Burns, my great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather. He has become a symbol of literary excellence, a superstar of poetry and is a national hero in Scotland.

Wanting to understand a bit more about this distant relative, I visited McGowans Butcher and learnt everything I wanted and didn't want to know about haggis. On January 26th every year 'Address to a haggis' is recited at Burns Suppers around the world to celebrate the poet's birthday and it's this tradition that and has made the eating of haggis such a special Scottish ritual.

I then went exploring around the village of Alloway (where Burns grew up) and had a few photos taken outside the Burns Cottage by a photographer from the Ayrshire Post. I walked through graveyards, museums and parklands marveling at how one man had captivated the imaginations of millions. If Batman is a symbol of incorruptabilty then Robert Burns is the polar opposite. By society's standards he loved too many women, he drank too much whisky and luckily for us he wrote he wrote 1000 times more than the average Scotsman in his 37 years of life. These themes of excess made him flawed but undeniably human. He came from an unprivileged background and when he did things, said things and wrote things it was always with unbridled passion. Hollywood are even talking about making a movie about his life starring Gerard Butler.

Sitting in the park llater that evening, eating my fish dinner with Robbie's statue for company I had the inspiration for a name for my new bicycle. Tam o' Shanter is an epic poem in which Robbie paints a vivid picture of the drinking classes in the town of Ayr in the late 18th century. It includes a few unforgettable characters including Tam himself and my favourite - his gallant horse Meg. She carries the drunken hero across Brigadoon (the bridge), chased by witches who clasp onto her tail but she gets away and carries her master to safety. It's a brilliant poem which you can read here and I think it's a name befitting of my new ride, who incidentally is also without a tail.

Check out more photos from Burns Country here.