Otherwalks Homepage

Hill walk routes to climb in SW Scotland - also coastal paths and National Scenic Areas with maps, pictures and other useful information based on extensive local knowledge
Other walks
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This site is concerned mostly with hill walking and I have concentrated on the four main ranges of hills: Galloway Hills Scaur Hills - Borders Hills - Lowther Hills
	There is however plenty of very pleasant walking elsewhere in the area and the picture on the right shows some of the series of leaflets on walking which you will get for free at any tourist office in the area. Each leaflet descibes 7 or 8 walks around a particular town in the region and gives other useful information about the town and it's environs. Most of the walks in these leaflets are not very demanding. There are also several books on walking in the area. Along the Solway Coast there are three National Scenic Areas that I have covered at some length. Just click on the titles shown below to go to the introductory page for each section.
	Fleet Valley National Scenic Area East Stewartry National Scenic Area Nith Estuary National Scenic Area
Other walks on the site which are neither on the hills nor in these National Scenic Area are:
St Ninian's Cave to Isle of Whithorn Portpatrick Round via Killantringan Mull of Galloway
. The walks in this "Otherwalks" section were done in a somewhat different spirit from the hill walks. Usually when you are on a big route on the hills all geared up to take whatever the day will throw at you and with a definite route in mind that is quite physically demanding, you are in a dynamic mental mode, which is about mananging navigation and physical effort economically so that you push on and achieve the target you have set yourself. Of course you experience the landscape you are in through all your senses, but part of your mind is focussed inwards on these management tasks and you drive yourself on and are exhilarated by the effort. In the Scots tongue we have an expression "tae go fur a dawner" - "dawner" being roughly equivalent to dander in English. But in Scots the meaning of the expression is as much about attitude of mind - you go wherever chance takes you or, as a good friend of mine says, "do whatever suggests itself" These walks were done in just that spirit with no big pack full of survival-for-the-day gear and a determination to be always pushing on. They were not much more than morning or afternoon strolls where we really took time to relax and tune in to the spirit of the place - an aboriginal type "walkabout" physically and spiritually in some magic landscape. You get to experience a bit of the soul of the place in whatever mood it is in for the day - it's mood depending, like all of us, on the weather, season of the year, and time of day. I hope the pictures can catch some of this sense of being in a living landscape for you.
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