Friday 29th May

Today we headed out to the middle of Galloway Forest Park, a place called Clatteringshaws.  At the visitors centre we took a short stroll to Bruce's Stone which wasn't that interesting - apparently he leant on it once......!

We then continued on to a mound in the park which I really wanted to go up.  Unfortunately we discovered that we couldn't because it was part of the wild goat enclosure, so we didn't quite know what to do instead!  Looking at the map, we saw Cairnsmore of Fleet and noticed it had a nature reserve and it looked off the beaten track so we decided to take a gamble on it.  And it paid off - it felt very remote (well, it kind of was really...!) and rather wild.  We followed the signs to the Visitor Centre which was small but very informative, and we found a leaflet for the 'Inbye Walk'.  There is a rocky outcrop very close to this called the Clints of Dromore which is what I decided I wanted to go up.

Halfway along the walk we had our opportunity as a path went up to them and was signposted 'Mountain Path'.  So we went up and up and up and finally reached the point I wanted to before we sat down and had some lunch.  The view was pretty damn good and we felt that this was more than a suitable alternative to what we had originally planned!

We missed a rain shower on the way up but as we were finishing lunch the rains came properly so, as we were all waterproofed up thanks to preparing for the previous one which never actually came, we sat there on our lunch rock with our umbrellas up (why not?!) until it blew over.  It lasted about 5 minutes or so but gave the ground a good soaking!  We made our way down back the same route we came up, more or less, and continued the walk on up to the disused viaduct which we walked along as well.  The path took us around and under the viaduct and back to the Visitor Centre where we had parked. 

On the way back to Isle of Whithorn we stopped off to take a look at some cup and ring marks before heading straight back and started on packing for the journey home.  All in all a good day to finish the holiday off with and a delicious meal at the local pub that evening - Mathew had fish and chips (which apparently did not satisfy his craving for having fish and chip shop chips on a harbour!) and I had the burger as they were out of Lemon Sole.  After sharing a sticky toffee pudding with ice cream we waddled back to the cottage to let everything digest!