01 The map above shows what is essentially a single walk, over Steygail, Wether Hill, Lowther Hill, East Mount Lowther, and Thirstane, with three possible shorter variations. The red route taken in a clockwise direction is the one shown in this web gallery and is one of the variants of that main walk.
The yellow and blue routes which you see in the map above have their own web gallery called Steygail and Enterkin Pass. A hillwalker would see the variants as possible escape routes from the main walk.
The main walk here is the longest and toughest. On it you go up by Steygail, Wether Hill, Lowther, East Mount Lowther and Thirstane - thereby combining the highest sections of the red route with the yellow route. If you want to shorten that you can come off on the saddle between Steygail and Wether Hill (shown in green) or you could go up over Lowther Hill and down the Enterkin Pass (in blue). You can of course do any variant of these routes clockwise or anti-clockwise.
In this particular web gallery we went clockwise onto Thirstane first, over East Mount Lowther to Lowther and then descended off Wether Hill exactly as in the red route.
As soon as you start away from the parking place on all of the routes shown here you are on the historic old bridle route from Dumfries to Edinburgh or Glasgow which at this point travels up the valley of the Enterkin Burn and onto the Enterkin Pass and up to the saddle between East Mount Lowther and Lowther Hill. The old bridle route continued on it's merry way north from there.