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.
John & Betty
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.
View from Screel Hill

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
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.

Betty at the Black LochAt the end of the loch is an impressive structure/sculpture  made from small pieces of local sandstone stacked into an elongated cone.Black Loch Sculpture

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.

A face on the wallThere 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