Betty’s favourite TV programme is “Countryfile”. There are usually some dogs featured on it.
She also likes any David Attenborough wildlife programs, especially with big cats or wolves in them.
Monthly Archives: November 2014
Late November Paddling
Birthday Pie
Screel Hill
Screel Hill is a steep, craggy little hill that rises above Auchencairn on the Solway coast. Although it’s not very high, the path to the summit is very steep and requires a bit of scrambling.
We had a fine day for the walk although it was a bit hazy for the distant views across the Solway Firth to the Lake District. The picture below is the view from the summit, with Balcary Bay and Hestan Island on the right and the Rough Firth is the bay on the left with Rough Island and the houses of Rockcliffe at the extreme left side.
Murray’s Monument and the Black Loch
A nice walk in the Galloway Forest Park, starting with an uphill pull to Murray’s Monument which sits at a good viewpoint for looking down the Palnure valley back towards Wigtown Bay.
Murray’s Monument comemmorates Alexander Murray, raised as a shepherd boy in this area but who went on to become a professor of Oriental Languages at Edinburgh University. The path then leads through woodland to the Old Edinburgh Road and along this to the Black Loch. We had a bit of a thrash through long grass and swampy sections to get across the end of the loch but soon we were on another good forest track.
At the end of the loch is an impressive structure/sculpture made from small pieces of local sandstone stacked into an elongated cone.
The path back to the start point of the walk starts through some old sheepfold walls where some of the stones have carved faces on them.
There is a more detailed description of a shorter version of this walk on the WalkHighlands web site at: http://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/galloway/murray-monument.shtml