The October instalment of my Landranger Project was in Dumfries and Galloway, a bit of Scotland I think I ought to know, but really don’t.
I must have been driven (as a youngster) across Dumfries and Galloway dozens of times travelling to or from Stranraer en route to Northern Ireland, but I’ve only got one recollection of staying in the area. That one stay ensured that Talnotry in the Galloway Forest has, in my family at least, always been associated with vast swarms of midges.
Sheet 76: Girvan
The southern part of the Clyde Coast is dominated by Ailsa Craig – renowned for its bird life (particularly gannets) and for the Blue Hone granite that is the traditional stuff of curling stones.
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| Sheet 76: Ailsa Craig |
Sheet 77: Dalmellington and New Galloway
The Galloway Forest covers most of this sheet, I choose to avoid Talnotry this time, and head to one of the quieter areas at the west end of the Forest Park. Some of the visitor centres are very activity-based but the area around around Glen Trool is much more peaceful.
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| Sheet 77: Loch Trool |
Sheet 82: Stranraer & Glenluce
Stranraer used to be the main route to/from Northern Ireland – and the last time I visited I had travelled to Stranraer on an overnight train from the south of England and had been able to walk from the railway platform just a few yards across the pier and straight onto a SeaLink ferry to Larne. Not these days – there are only occasional local trains to the station (which is still at the end of the pier) but there aren’t any boats at all – all the boats head for Cairnryan a few miles up Loch Ryan.
As you head south from Stranraer down the Rhins, the place starts to feel more and more like an island – and at the southern tip you get to a very traditional looking Stevenson-built lighthouse.
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| Sheet 82: Mull of Galloway Lighthouse |
Sheet 83: Newton Stewart & Kirkcudbright
The Solway Coast is one that has changed many times over the centuries - once upon a time the Isle of Whithorn really was an island, but now it is a village near the southern tip of one of the many Solway headlands. It has also long been a place of pilgrimage with documentation reaching back over 2000 years - one of the local landmarks is St Ninian’s Chapel which was at one time a stopping off point for pilgrims on their way to the priory at nearby Whithorn.
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| Sheet 83: St Ninian's Chapel, Isle of Whithorn |
Sheet 84: Dumfries & Castle Douglas
I think everyone needs an island retreat. This includes the Black Douglases (somewhat disreputable characters that may or may not appear somewhere on my family tree) who built their island retreat on a small, but readily defended, island in the middle of the River Dee.
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| Sheet 84: Threave Castle, Castle Douglas |
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