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