Scotland’s North Coast 500 has rightly been described as one of the world’s great driving routes, but has, to a degree, become a victim of its own success and can get uncomfortably busy at peak season.
For those eager to experience the beauty of Scotland without the crowds there is an alternative. The South West Coast 300 (SWC 300) takes in some of Scotland’s most sublime scenery, mountains, forests, sandy beaches, castles, gardens, quiet Georgian towns, and an abundance of history.
The southern section of the SWC 300 runs through two of Britain’s most beautiful yet least-known counties, Kirkcudbrightshire and Wigtownshire, which together make up the Galloway segment of Dumfries and Galloway. Settled in the eighth century by Gaelic-speaking tribes from Ireland, Galloway feels set apart from the rest of Scotland, possessing its own distinctive mood and character.
Kirkcudbrightshire (pronounced Kirk-coo-bree-shire) begins across the River Nith from Dumfries. The north of the county is wild and hilly, home to southern Scotland’s highest peak, Merrick (2764ft or 842m above sea level) and Britain’s largest forest, Galloway Forest Park, 300 square miles of woodland, waterfalls, mountains and lochs alive with otters, red deer, squirrels and kites. At the head of the list to become Britain’s newest national park, in 2009 Galloway Forest Park was designated as the UK’s first Dark Sky Park as there is so little human habitation that there is no light pollution to obscure the night sky.
On the southern edge of the park, overlooking beautiful Loch Trool, stands Bruce’s Stone, a huge granite boulder that commemorates Robert the Bruce’s first victory over the English here in March 1307 during the Scottish War of Independence.
The south of the county overlooks the Solway Firth, a land of salt marshes, wide bays and estuaries, dramatic headlands, golden sands and small, sturdy towns. Eight miles south of Dumfries are the magnificent ruins of New Abbey, founded in 1273 by Devorguilla, Lady of Galloway and mother of the puppet King of Scotland John Balliol.
When her husband John, founder of Oxford’s Balliol College, died in 1268 she had his “sweet heart” embalmed in an ivory casket that she carried around for the rest of her life. On her own death in 1290 the casket was buried with her before the altar at New Abbey, which became known as “Sweetheart Abbey”, thus giving a new word to the English language. Also buried there is William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England.
Further south, standing on a windy promontory in the grounds of Arbigland House outside Kirkbean is a simple gardener’s cottage, the birthplace in 1747 of John Paul Jones, “Father of the American Navy”. It is now a museum in his honour. Emigrating to Virginia at the age of 13, Jones joined the Continental Navy and went on to mastermind the first victory of the American Navy over the Royal Navy at the Battle of Flamborough Head off the Yorkshire coast in 1779.
The granite town of Dalbeattie boasts a memorial to local hero William Murdoch, First Lieutenant on the Titanic. Portrayed in the film Titanic as a coward, he was actually, according to eyewitness accounts, amazingly brave and saved many lives by guiding passengers to the lifeboats at the cost of his own life. In 1998, the film company’s vice president came to Dalbeattie to deliver an apology.
Just outside Castle Douglas, an elegant Georgian market town laid out by merchant William Douglas in 1792, stands Threave Castle, one of the mightiest towers in Scotland and stronghold of the Black Douglases who ruled Galloway during the 14th and 15th centuries. Set on an island in the middle of the River Dee it can only be reached by boat.
On the coast to the south, an air of melancholy hangs about the impressive ruins of Dundrennan Abbey, founded in 1142 by David I. Mary, Queen of Scots spent her last night in Scotland here after defeat at the Battle of Langside in 1568. Next morning she made her way down to a creek on the Solway Firth, boarded a fishing boat and sailed away to England, never to return.
Kirkcudbright, washed by the Gulf Stream and possessed of a special quality of light, is known as “The Artist’s Town” and supports a flourishing colony of painters and craftsmen whose work is shown in local galleries. The houses are gaily painted and the streets wide and breezy. The village scenes from the cult 1973 film The Wicker Man were filmed in the town.
Graceful Gatehouse of Fleet is watched over by a tall Victorian clocktower while, perched atop a rocky knoll on the edge of town, is Cardoness Castle, a well-preserved 15th-century tower house, pretty much impregnable and blessed with far-reaching views across the bay.
The coast road between Gatehouse of Fleet and the little harbour village of Creetown was accurately described by Thomas Carlyle, in conversation with Queen Victoria, as “the finest road in her kingdom”. In the 19th century, Dalbeattie granite was exported all over the world from Creetown, helping to build the Thames Embankment and Sydney Harbour.
At Newton Stewart we enter Wigtownshire, Scotland’s extreme south-west, a windswept county of moorland, big skies, birdsong – and books.
Wigtown, the county town, is Scotland’s National Book Town, home to Scotland’s biggest second-hand bookshop and a well attended annual book festival. The airy streets have a scholarly feel to them and there is a spacious market place with colourful gardens and a bowling green watched over by the flamboyant old County Buildings, now housing the town library and museum.
South of the town is the Bladnoch Distillery, Scotland’s most-southerly whisky distillery, open for tours and tastings from Wednesdays to Saturdays.
Wigtown is gateway to the mysterious Machars, a flat peninsula thrusting out into the Irish Sea, dotted with lonely churches, pretty villages, hidden beaches and mossy cliffs.
Here is Whithorn, the cradle of Scottish Christianity where, in 397 AD, after a pilgrimage to Rome, Scotland’s first Christian missionary St Ninian built, and was later buried beneath, Scotland’s first stone church. It was painted white so that it could be seen from a distance and was known as the Candida Casa or White House, from which Whithorn gets its name. The nave and crypt of a 12th-century cathedral built over St Ninian’s shrine survive.
Away to the west: a peaceful walk through woods leads to a pebbly beach and St Ninian’s Cave, where the saint came for solitude. On the walls are Christian crosses carved by 8th-century pilgrims.
On the clifftop at Burrow Head to the south, the wooden stumps of the Wicker Man’s legs mark where the final gruesome scenes from the film of that name were shot.
Hidden in woods at Kirkmaiden there is a small chapel where members of the local landowners, the Maxwell family, are buried, while on the hillside above stands a bronze otter, sculpted by Penny Wheatley in honour of Gavin Maxwell, author of Ring of Bright Water, who was born nearby at Elrig, a big grey house on the moor.
The Sands of Luce, a long crescent of golden beach, lead to the hammerhead-shaped peninsula known as the Rhins of Galloway. To the north, Stranraer, ferries to Northern Ireland, and Castle Kennedy Gardens gathered about the ruins of a 15th-century castle noted for rhododendrons and azaleas.
To the south, Logan Botanic Garden, where tropical plants flourish in the warm winds of the Gulf Stream. Nearby, at Port Logan, is Britain’s oldest natural marine aquarium, a tidal fishpond scooped out of the cliffs in 1788 as a sea fish larder for the local laird. Some of the inhabitants, which include cod, pollock, turbot, mullet and hermit crabs, are quite tame and can rise to the surface to be fed by hand.
A mile south is Drummore, Scotland’s most-southerly village, a delightful collection of white-washed cottages running uphill from a sandy beach and beyond that, Scotland’s furthest south, the Mull of Galloway, further south indeed than Durham. Here, Scotland ends in solitary, spectacular style with cliffs 300 feet high, a lighthouse and views, they say, of five kingdoms, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Scotland (the Hebrides), England (the Lake District), and the Kingdom of Heaven.