Galloway Guide

Every corner of Scotland has its own beauty. The Highlands are breathtaking, a vast landscape of heather-covered mountains and stark moors, glassy lochs and hidden glens. Skye, Mull, Iona, and the other Hebridean Islands present Scotland in miniature, their rugged terrain surrounded by the deep blue sea. The Borders are full of history, fine architecture, and literary luminaries. And Edinburgh is the perfect walking city, chock-a-block with shops, galleries, and museums.

Yet, from the first, it was quiet Galloway in the South West of Scotland that stole my heart completely. A gently rolling countryside dotted with quaint villages and grazing sheep, the land also boasts craggy mountains like the Range of the Awful Hand and charming shoreline villages like Rockcliffe facing the Rough Firth. Galloway’s colorful history includes both kings and poets—Robert the Bruce (1274–1329) and Robert Burns (1759–1796)—along with Solway smugglers like Robert McDowall and tinkler Gypsies like Billy Marshall, who died in 1792 at the age of 120!

The narrow, winding roads that weave their way across Galloway lead to towering castles and chambered cairns, hallowed abbeys and stone circles, some of which are featured in Thorn in My Heart and Fair Is the Rose. Visit my Web site for a dozen photos in vibrant color.

We’ll begin with the land of the McKies in the glen of Loch Trool. Those stalwart souls who venture across the Southern Upland Way, a 212-mile trek from Portpatrick on the west coast to Cockburnspath on the east, pass through verdant Glen Trool. For the less adventurous among us, a simple climb up to Bruce’s Stone affords a magnificent view of the glen and surrounding hills.

The best books for getting to know Galloway (even if you never leave home) are Innes Macleod’s Where the Whaups Are Crying: A Dumfries and Galloway Anthology (2001) and Geoffrey Stell’s Dumfries and Galloway: Exploring Scotland’s Heritage (1997). Both are in print and make interesting reading. Travelers will require a detailed map, and no one makes maps like Ordnance Survey, the National Mapping Agency of Great Britain. Their Travelmaster 4 map of Southern Scotland is excellent. For those who prefer to identify every tiny clachan and single-track road, the Landranger Series is wonderful—you’ll need Maps 77, 78, 83, and 84 to capture all of Thorn in My Heart country.

An ancient Scottish burgh, Dumfries with its thirty-two thousand residents is the perfect size. Pleasantly situated on the River Nith, Dumfries is easy enough to navigate by car—pick up a Parking Disc at the D&G Council on English Street—and crisscrossed with wee closes that beg to be explored on foot. Off the High Street sits the Globe Inn, established in 1610, where Jamie proposed to Rose in the same cozy snuggery Robert Burns often visited. James Mackay’s Burns-Lore of Dumfries and Galloway is the book to have in hand while strolling the busy streets of the Queen of the South. Well worth visiting are the Robert Burns Centre on Mill Road, the Burns House on Burns Street, and the Old Bridge House, which Jamie and Rose passed as they crossed the Devorgilla Bridge into Dumfries.

Heading west out of Dumfries, one enters Kirkcudbrightshire, also known as the Stewartry. Numbered among my favorite villages and burghs there are Castle Douglas, Kirkcudbright (kir-koo-bree), Gatehouse of Fleet, and New Galloway—all with charming bed-and-breakfasts, tearooms, historic sites, colorful gardens, and friendly folk. South of Dumfries lie New Abbey and Kirkbean, featured in Thorn in My Heart and Fair Is the Rose, and to the north are Thornhill and Moniaive, two more noteworthy villages in Nithsdale.

Three Galloway abbeys—Dundrennan, Glenluce, and Sweetheart—built in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries respectively (hence the reason for the village name “New Abbey”), are reason enough to join Historic Scotland, which allows free access to some three hundred properties across Scotland. They include New Abbey Corn Mill, which the sisters passed on their way to kirk, and Threave Castle, which Jamie eyed en route to Auchengray. Visit the following Web sites for membership information on both Historic Scotland and The National Trust for Scotland, which also oversees dozens of historic attractions.

The pleasant country road stretching between the villages of New Abbey and Beeswing undulates past Auchengray Hill and Lochend, now known as Loch Arthur—yes, as in King Arthur. I used the eighteenth-century name of Lochend so as not to muddy the waters with Arthurian legend, but it does add to the romance of the setting. Some Arthurian enthusiasts claim his legendary Excalibur rests deep in the loch, though no evidence of such has been found. The loch definitely contains a prehistoric crannog—a fortified island built by lake dwellers eons ago, now submerged beneath the placid surface.

Och! So brief a visit to so beautiful a place. I hope I’ve given you a wee taste of the Galloway I’ve come to love. There are dozens of books, maps, photos, videos, and Web sites to guide on you on a virtual tour of the land that Leana, Jamie, and Rose have called their own. Consider this fair warning: If you visit this corner of Scotland, you may discover upon your return home that you, too, have left your heart in Galloway.

www.visit-dumfries-and-galloway.co.uk

Copyright © 2003 by Liz Curtis Higgs.
This Galloway Guide may be photocopied for personal use only.
All other rights reserved