Scotland’s new road trip

CAN A NEW ROAD TRIP MIRROR THE SUCCESS OF THE NORTH COAST 500 AT THE OTHER END OF THE COUNTRY? PREPARE FOR HORTICULTURAL WONDERS, HOLLYWOOD STARS AND LITERARY FOOTPRINTS ON THE SOUTH-WEST COASTAL 300

2018-06-02 -

THE Saab is in hog heaven – as am I. Coming off the M74 at Abington, we turned back on ourselves and barrelled north-west along the first of many B-roads, the presence of a couple of motorcyclists going in the other direction indicating quality motoring territory. Hooking left, we swooped down through a shallow basin of moorland in the Lowther Hills, the car stretching its legs after a tedious stretch of motorway.

Then we come swiftly upon a coach making inelegant but efficient headway on the threshold of the Crawick Pass, throwing gravel to both sides. The pass is touted as being among the highlights of the very reason Katherine and I are here on a sunny Sunday in late April. Not if you’re stuck behind an elephant on 24in wheels. Who would be travelling by coach here today?

The identity of the passengers is soon revealed when a Honda CRV hurtles past first the Saab and then the bus, with one of the green-and-white-clad passengers giving a sustained middle-finger salute to the coach passengers, whose team, it turns out, has been trounced 5-0 by their rivals from the east end of Glasgow, thereby securing

Celtic’s seventh consecutive Scottish Premier League title.

WELCOME to the Southwest Coastal 300, which tourism bosses hope will replicate the success of the North Coast 500, increasing the number of visitors to such spots as Kirkcudbright, Wigtown and Mull of Galloway. Given the mixed response to what has been described as Scotland’s Route 66 from Highland communities, who have expressed concern over road safety as well as the pressure placed on infrastructure, you might think “be careful what you wish for”.

But the focus of my tour is squarely on the driving experience and the scenery (with a side order of paying homage to a literary hero), and while I’ve ticked off most of the north and the islands from my list of places to visit, like many people I’m ill-acquainted with this corner of the country.

We’re tackling the route over three days, the odometer reading 184,383 as we leave Paisley. I’ve opted to take the anti-clockwise approach to the official route, with berths booked in Portpatrick on day one and Gatehouse of Fleet on day two, with home the final destination on day three.

After bidding a relieved farewell to the depressed legion of Rangers fans, I finally get my foot down and hustle west through Kirkconnel, taking a left onto the B741. It’s here that the road starts to show character, a series of straights and easy bends that sweeps up and down through forest before descending to Dalmellington, just north of Loch Doon on the northern tip of Galloway Forest Park.

From here it’s a short distance uphill before giving way to a trio of motorcyclists – another good omen – at a cattle grid and entering a stretch of singletrack. Soon we are on the tail of another vehicle ill-suited to the scenery – an Asda delivery van who kindly pulls in to allow me to give the Saab what’s known as “the beans”.

A terrific downhill stretch, where the deployment of low gearing is the only way to stay within the speed limit, leads to the village of Straiton, overlooked by a striking obelisk on Craigengower Hill erected in memory of Lt-Col James Hunter Blair, who met his end in the Crimean War.

After the moorland of East Ayrshire, Straiton is the first stop on a birl through more verdant scenery, a landscape of lush green fields, woodland and bridges over the winding Water of Girvan.

Soon we are craving our arrival in Girvan and the mandatory consumption of ice-cream.

With the afternoon wriggling free from my fingers like an eel, there’s little time to do anything other than spend a penny then gobble a double cone while gazing out to Ailsa Craig before we’re bundling back into the chariot.

Within minutes we are mazing south on the A77 through Lendalfoot to Ballantrae, the Firth of Clyde glistening to starboard, before we turn inland and uphill. A blast down Glen App leads to the mouth of Loch Ryan and a trundle through Cairnryan and on to Stranraer.

There’s nothing for us here, so it’s a swift

run down the A77 before bisecting the Rhinn of Galloway and twisting through farmland to Portpatrick, only 144 miles from home but a world away in terms of serenity. Soon, under a clear sky with the sea air in our lungs, we are unwinding outside the Crown Hotel with the expert assistance of Fog Horn IPA, made by Portpatrick Brewery. Blessed? You bet. We press the pause button. Dinner. Bed. Sleep.

We rise to a view of the broad azure sky dropping to meet the horizon, a solitary cargo ship chugging north. In the far distance lurks the coast of Northern Ireland. Blue upon blue upon blue. What a gift. From our hotel above the harbour the village looks no more or less busy than it did the night before. It looks just as pretty, too.

But leave we must, making a solemn promise to return. A journey of 110 miles on mostly rural roads lies ahead. Full Scottish devoured and coffee gulped, we pile into the Swedish hooligan and get on the gas.

PLOUGHING south on the A716, Luce Bay yielding to the glorious Machars peninsula to our left, our first stop is the most southerly tip of Scotland, Mull of Galloway. More motorcyclists – a pair of Germans who tell us their plan is to cover the entire mainland coast in a fortnight – keep my hopes high. The conditions are ideal for padding around the lighthouse, from where, to the north, you can see Ringdoo Point; to the east, Burrow Head; to the south, the Isle of Man; and to the west, Northern Ireland.

Mindful of the day’s schedule, we muscle over to Port Logan on the western flank of the Rhinns en route to our next port of call. While there’s the sum total of hee-haw happening in the tiny village, I do come across a thickly-bearded scarecrow clad as a sailor, his naval cap at a jaunty angle. This, I discover later, is a tribute from the locals to Gerard Butler, one of my wilder contemporaries at Glasgow University and now a bona fide A-lister, who was here last year filming the forthcoming movie Keepers.

Onwards we shift, leaving the B7065 for Logan Botanic Garden, which even early in the season is brimful of wonders both horticultural and piscine, being home to a formal pond hoaching with koi carp who possess a curiosity about the humans above the surface to rival that of a peckish street cat. The gunnera bog is yet to spring into life, yet the panoply of cheerily thriving plants from far-flung corners such as Chile, New Zealand and Asia is testament to the climate you can expect on a visit to the south-west.

But there’s no time to stand still, not on this occasion, so we get the show on the road – the A716, to be exact – and head north past Sandhead and across to Glenluce, where the ruins of the 13th-century Cistercian abbey provide a momentary detour. We baulk at paying an entry fee for a site we can satisfactorily appreciate from a distance of 200 yards, look at the time and get moving.

After making swift progress down the A747, on the east coast of the Machars, I allow myself the puerile pleasure of stopping to photograph a sign for the splendidly titled Cock Inn (another proudly asserts: “Cock