Day 1: Portpatrick to Castle Kennedy
A bowl of porridge with stewed rhubarb and scrambled eggs on toast inside me (I highly recommend the Harbour Lights Guest House in Stranraer), we headed to Tescos for a few lunch bits before getting the bus out to Portpatrick.
Portpatrick seemed a pleasant seaside town. However, it had the most expensive public toilets I’ve seen in a while. You’ve got to keep the riff raff out somehow. The start was right at the bottom of the main street down from the bus stop, so finding it wasn’t hard.
I did a fair bit of dithering photographing and filming the start point, which meant Paul was a good bit ahead of me until the climb up onto the cliffs. A short way further, on we dropped into a bay, and then repeated the exercise again. Here, we wandered down to the sea, and also met a fellow SUW hiker.
A bit more cliff top work, after finding the right way up through a rocky defile, and we were approaching the lighthouse. A cold wind keeping temperatures down on what would otherwise have been a pleasant day.
The lighthouse itself is privately owned, so nothing to see there, and we took our morning (coffee) stop in the lee of a stone wall, a bit further along the road. We’d got ahead of the other SUW hiker, who’d gone wrong climbing back onto the cliffs, but we could see her behind us for much of the morning.
All of the lanes and paths were bedecked with gorse in bloom, and the day was very much scented cocount as a result. It was heaven. We climbed over a hill with a small cairn and a right turn, which would drop us down closer to Knockquhasen Reservoir which we could see from the top of the hill.
Down at the bottom was the first cist, but we found it empty.
A bit further along the path, we found a grassy bank to sit on for lunch. Paul was starting to complain of a sore throat, which I took as a bad sign.
The afternoon’s walk was a lot less inspiring than the morning’s – the highlight probably being the view back to Stranraer. Paul spent much of the afternoon following the football and worrying about whether he’d get tickets to the Europa Conference final.
We approached Castle Kennedy and Paul announced that he really fancied a bed for the night. At the petrol station in Castle Kennedy, we managed to call the Guest House and get our old room back, but the call for a taxi yielded nothing, until having been told by the taxi firm that there was nothing, I saw one pull into the garage. I went over and asked – nothing ventured, nothing gained – and we had a ride back into Stranraer.
Day 2: Castle Kennedy to Beehive Bothy
Paul was clearly not well judging by the sounds coming from his bed. He was up early to clear Tesco’s shelves of Lemsip and a COVID test, so as to cover all bases. Frankly, I was surprised he even attempted today’s walk.
A taxi back to Castle Kennedy, then a walk down the driveway towards an inviting looking loch. Then a climb up above farmland into an area that we’d have struggled to find a camp spot the day before.
The terrain improved, but well beyond where we’d have called it the night before. Soon we were in forest, and a delightful path to the second cist, which actually yielded something this time.
As we left the forest to follow the railway to a crossing point across both it and Water of Luce, Paul indicated that he was going to stop in New Luce.
Hopeful of some lunch, either in the form of a cafe or a village shop, I was quite happy to detour into New Luce. Shop shut, no cafes. I left Paul waiting for a cab back to Stranraer, and headed back to the trail – opting to simply take the road to where the trail joins it, rather than retrace my steps and do a bit of pointless cross-country.
In a way it was nice to see what the legs could do, and I struck out at a decently fast pace, covering the same distance in 2 hours that had taken 3.5 hours in the morning.
The route cut across the western side of Balmurrie Fell to enter the forest to the north, and after a boggy welcome to the periphery of the forest, I was soon on decent forest tracks and approaching the Beehive Bothy.
Here I spotted Afke, the hiker we’d seen the day before, and I sat down to chat. Afke was staying in the bothy, and I decided to camp outside, so if no one else came, she could have it to herself.
While I was setting up inside the tent, I heard voices, and two more hikers turned up – Wolfgang and Sophie, and they went in the bothy. Afke now moved out into her tent so the German couple could have the privacy of the bothy.
We all gathered inside for dinner and the exchange of trail tales, before I headed up the hillside just before darkness fell to get a signal and check-in with home, before retiring to the Pioulou for the night.
