Walking the Galloway Hills

The 33 circular day walks and 7 longer expeditions in this guidebook cover rocky, heathery wilderness in southwest Scotland. Ranging up to 840m, these are significant hills, including Merrick, Corserine, Millfore and the Rhinns of Kells. Longer routes include a 5-day tour and a brief description of the Southern Uplands Way.

The Galloway Hills are the highlands of south-west Scotland - a tract of rocky, boggy, wilderness hills with some forest cover. Much of the area has been designated as the Galloway Forest Park, offering almost unlimited access for walkers. One guidebook calls the Galloway Hills “A Walker’s Paradise”. The quote at the top of the page, however, is taken from publicity for the 1986 Karrimor International Mountain Marathon, which was held in the Galloway Hills. The statement can be amended slightly for walkers using this guidebook - “Be warned, it’s going to be tough underfoot every year!” Although this guide includes a couple of easy forest trails, many more of the routes head for the hills where paths are few and the ground is exceptionally rugged. Extracts from the detailed Harveys Walker’s Map of the Galloway Hills illustrate 33 day walks, then brief notes describe seven longer walks. You can marvel at the wilderness qualities of the hills, or follow the wanderings of Robert the Bruce, or base yourself at a remote bothy to enjoy walks in the heart of the Galloway Hills. With virtual freedom to roam in any direction the Galloway Hills are truly a walker’s paradise, but remember that paradise is a difficult condition to attain and is generally associated with a path of suffering too!

The Bare Bones

There are four rugged ranges of hills in this guide - the Range of the Awful Hand, the Rhinns of Kells, the Minnigaff Hills and the Dungeon Hills. The oldest rocks occur around the edge of the area, being represented by Ordovician strata which were laid down around 500 million years ago. The Loch Doon Granite forms most of the hill groups and this arrived later in a molten mass which was squeezed into the Earth’s crust under immense pressure during a period of mountain building. This mass melted some of the older Ordovician rocks, or at least baked them in intense heat so that their mineral structures were altered - a process called metamorphism.

Those far-off days of mountain building are long past, and the present-day shape of the hills is due to a quite different process. A mere million years ago the land was gripped in an Ice Age, a period which ended only 10,000 years ago, which is nothing on a geological timescale. As vast accumulations of snow and ice built up over the original Galloway Hills, the pressure and weight of the ice caused it to “flow” downslope as glaciers. The ice moved slowly, but inexorably, grinding broken rock against rockfaces as it travelled, carving bowl-shaped corries out of the high hills and deepening the valleys to leave them with steep sides and level floors. All we see today are the shapes of ice-scoured rock and the masses of low-lying glacial rubble, or moraine, which was transported within the ice.

A Glimpse of History

Scotland’s colourful and turbulent history is well represented around the fringes of the Galloway Hills, but seldom did anything of note occur within their bleak confines. The first hunter-gatherers settled along the coastal margins so that they could live off the produce of both the land and the sea. The hills will have been clothed in their original wildwoods, with swampy areas and wild beasts. Although a horde of Bronze Age implements was found on the Fell of Eschoncan, there are no traces of any hill forts or permanent settlements. There is, however, a reconstructed Romano-British house near Clatteringshaws Loch. Although Whithorn and Galloway are associated with the dawning of Christianity in Scotland, all the old churches and big abbeys are located some distance from the hills.

We’re well into historical times before there are truly momentous happenings on the hills. Robert the Bruce and his tiny army of a few hundred were hemmed into these wild hills by thousands of English troops. The Bruce had killed Red Comyn and hastily assumed kingship. Despite early successes he was later forced to flee for his life, then had difficulty raising an army. He embarked on a campaign of guerrilla warfare from the hills, where he used the rocky, boggy terrain to his advantage in 1307. With each success he was able to demoralise the enemy and increase his own support, until he was able to break from the hills and extend his campaign throughout Scotland, finally thrashing the English at Bannockburn in 1314.

In the turbulent years of the “Killing Times” through the latter half of the 1600s, the hills again provided a refuge and safe haven for people fleeing religious persecution. Furious debates had centred on the need for bishops in the Scottish church, and the extent of authority the king should wield. Fiery preachers sprang up and some clerics were ousted from their parishes, and as dissent was punishable by heavy fines, imprisonment, torture or death, secret “conventicles” were held in the hills. Even so, some people were killed while attending these prayer meetings in the hills and there are monuments to the “Covenanters” all over Galloway. There’s a story behind every monument and the victims are widely regarded as martyrs.

A novel called The Raiders by S.R.Crockett again focuses our attention on the hills. Although fact and fiction are woven together in the story, these hills really were used as a hideaway for fierce gypsy clans - notably the Faas, Marshalls and Macatericks. They seem to have lived by raiding cattle and stealing goods from their neighbours. The most colourful character in those times was surely Billy Marshall, widely regarded as the gypsy “king”. He is reputed to have lived for 120 years, dying in 1792. Many stories are told about him throughout the region and they surely contain at least a grain of truth.

The few farms that ever managed to eke an existence out of the wild interior of the Galloway Hills were abandoned and falling ruinous by 1900. The land came into the hands of the Forestry Commission and sheep rearing was replaced by timber growing. The planting started in 1922, so some stands are coming into maturity and are being clear-felled. Replanting is taking place so that timber can be harvested in the future.

The Galloway Forest Park

The Galloway Forest Park covers much of the Forestry Commission’s holdings in the Galloway Hills. Some 250 square miles (670sq km) of land was designated as a Forest Park in 1943. Although the Forestry Commission’s primary purpose is to produce timber, not all the land has been planted. There are no plantations on the highest hills, where the trees simply do not thrive, nor have all the boggy valleys been planted, even though they would support forest cover. The needs of conservation and recreation have been recognised and the Forestry Commission have provided some basic amenities and interpretative facilities for visitors, as well as allowing virtual free access on foot. A number of leaflets have been prepared which cover forest trails and other points of interest.