We had a few good walks around the local coastline in October. Here’s a selection of pictures from the walks.

There is a good footpath from Isle of Whithorn that gradually gains height along the cliffs to Burrow Head. Here we are enjoying a quick snack stop with Jerry & Cath.

The cliffs at Burrow Head are quite impressive. The final scenes of the film “The Wicker Man” were filmed up here in 1973 with Edward Woodward coming to a toasty end.

The next coast walk was eastwards along the coast from Rockcliffe to Portling. This is a popular stretch of coast and features some fine beaches and rugged cliff scenery. This is the first beach around the corner from Rockcliffe.

The path continues across farmland with great views eastwards towards Sandyhills and across the Solway Firth to the Lake District.

Cottages at Port o’ Warren where we turned inland to get an ice cream at Colvend. The sand and mud flats in the background are the RSPB bird and nature reserve at Mersehead.

The next walk was a loop around Monreith, overlooking Luce Bay on the far side of the Whithorn peninsula. We started from the beach car park and crossed Front Bay to Kirkmaiden chapel. There are the remains of an old chapel and the one that you can see poking out from the trees is a memorial chapel for the Maxwell family who lived nearby.

The best-known of the Maxwells was Gavin Maxwell who wrote “Ring of Bright Water” about his time with otters on the west coast of Scotland. This bronze otter is a memorial to him. The hill in the background is the Fell of Barhullion and was our destination on this walk. From the summit we looped back round to the left and down into Monreith Village.

This is the view over Monreith Bay from near the Maxwell memorial.

After another coastal walk from Kippford to Rockcliffe and back, we called in on the other side of the Urr estuary at Palnackie. There is a tiny tidal harbour at Palnackie with some unexpectedly large fishing boats tied up there. Palnackie’s main claim to fame is their annual Flounder Tramping competition where competitors try to catch flounders by wading around in the mud and standing on them.

We were disappointed to find that the Dock Cafe was closed the day that we visited but it’s a cute little structure so we’ll have to go back again when it’s open to try it out.