17th May 2025: Portpatrick to Stranraer – 10 miles
I deliberately stayed awake quite late last night watching a film on my tablet, hoping I wouldn’t wake too early. I’d had an early start yesterday, and although the public transport journey had been fairly smooth and easy, I was feeling a bit tired. The tablet is brilliant and I’ve carried it for the past three or four years on these walks, I also have a USB memory stick onto which I can load films or TV shows to watch in the evening. This year however I’ve upped the technology ante somewhat, and I’ve installed a Jellyfin server at home and as long as I have a half decent Wi-Fi signal in my B&B I can connect the tablet to my server back home and have access to all of my media library. This is absolutely fantastic if there’s nothing to watch on Netflix or iPlayer, it means I can always fall back on one of my old favourite films or something I’ve downloaded previously.
So much for a lie-in however, as I was awake at 4:30, but thankfully I have an ensuite room in this B&B, so at least I didn’t have to wander across a corridor to a separate bathroom for a pee. Once back in bed, I did manage another couple of hours, but I was pretty much wide awake by 6:30 and decided to take advantage of this and get the earlier bus to Portpatrick. This would also mean I could walk in the cooler morning and hopefully be finished before the afternoon got too hot. It wasn’t expected to get above 19 or 20 degrees, so it wasn’t going to be arduous even if I took my time.
As part of my pre-walk planning I’d looked at the best breakfast option for this morning, and tomorrow and I’d found a Greggs right next to the bus stop for Portpatrick. The nice thing about Greggs (other than the obvious) is that they are normally open early – I’ve never understood cafes that open for breakfast at 9am, that’s mid-morning as far as I’m concerned. The Greggs in Stranraer is open at 7.30, so I could sit in there with a bacon roll and a cup of tea and still have loads of time to stroll across the road and catch the bus at 8.25.
I checked Google Maps reviews to find the best bakery in town and found that it was fairly close to Greggs but it didn’t open until 8am, so I decided to get breakfast at Greggs and then head over to the bakery and pick up a scotch pie for lunch. I got a bacon roll and a big cup of tea in Greggs, where I noticed that they also sold scotch pies, but I decided I’d give the bakery a go on the basis that you typically get a better quality pie from a decent bakery. I finished my brew and walked the couple of streets across to Gillespie’s – however, when I got there, although it was open all the shelves were empty, there were no pies, no rolls, nothing at all. I mean what’s the point in being open if you’ve got nothing to sell? I turned around and went back to Greggs and bought what turned out to be a pretty good scotch pie and headed across to the bus stop.
The bus arrived on time, which is always nice and helps to reduce my stress levels, and I joined the only other passenger as we headed out of town towards the coast. It quickly became apparent that my fellow passenger was a sniffer. She was a grown woman and she sniffed like a toddler; snotty, incessantly and loudly. I almost turned round and asked her if she had a hankie, but in the end I just put my earphones in to drown out the dreadful noise and to avoid any conflict.
Once in Portpatrick I made my way around the harbour – the blue of the sky and blue of the bay were absolutely stunning and brought to mind my first visit here in 2013, when the weather had been very similar. The harbour was busy with boats loading up tourist fisherman for day trips and I also saw several people climbing the cliff path away from the town. I took a few photos in the beautiful sunshine then headed for far side of the cove, to the start of the Southern Upland Way. I followed a few people up the steps, onto the cliff path. The steps have a geological timeline carved into them, which is novel and made it easier for me to take my time and try and read them all.
It looks like most of the people ahead of me were going to the hotel at the top of the path and only a single couple continued along the Southern Upland Way. I was taking it really easy and taking lots of photos so I never really caught up with them until we dropped down into Port Mora, the first accessible cove on the coast. It would be here that I would normally dip my boots if I was intending to walk all the way across to the east coast, but I wasn’t and the tide was out, so I just skirted around the edge of the beach. The couple that I had been following went out to meet the tide and I assumed they were performing the traditional coast-to-coast ritual that I’d just shunned, but as I was climbing the cliff path above them, I could see they were scattering somebody’s ashes into the water. It was a beautiful day and an absolutely glorious setting and I could think of plenty of worse places to be laid to rest.
In fact I’ve recently been thinking quite a lot about my own mortality – I’m not getting any younger and I’ve started to make plans for what should happen to me after I die. I’m not a sentimental person, and I don’t get maudlin but my younger sister died quite unexpectedly a couple of months ago, without making any plans – and I decided that it would probably be better for my family if I did make some while I’ve still got a chance to think about it. My initial ponderings have me thinking about having my ashes scattered along a corpse road in the Yorkshire Dales, specifically the path between Keld and Grinton. I’ve walked this path on dozens of occasions, often as part of the Herriot Way and also one of my other guide books the Swale Way and it’s a place I love deeply. A corpse road for those of you that are unfamiliar with the term was the path taken by mourners who would have to carry the coffin of their recently deceased from wherever they lived in the dale to the nearest consecrated ground. For Swaledale the consecrated ground was St Andrew’s Church in Grinton and the corpse road was well established all the way from the head of the dale in Keld. Anyway that’s hopefully a long time in the future and certainly one of my walks that I will be unable to add to my journal.
Back on the Southern Upland Way the path out of the cove and onto the coast path is absolutely brutal, although fairly short. It has steps cut into the rock and a chain handrail you can use to pull yourself up. I just don’t remember it being so steep the last couple of times I did this, but that’s probably more to do with the state of my legs than my memory!
I watched one of the fishing boats I’d seen boarding anglers in the port, chugging out along the coast toward its destination: a small white dot in the vast blue ocean. The moorland stretch across to the lighthouse at Killantringan is lovely and bouncy and has some fantastic views across the rocky crags to the ocean and the view to the right isn’t bad either, the green hills dotted with yellow broom and gorse.
Beyond the lighthouse I joined a tarmac lane, and the rest of the journey to Stranraer, although punctuated with a couple of lovely sections, is mostly on tarmac or hardcore path and often between hedges or past houses and farms – so I was definitely past the most scenic section of the walk today.
At about the halfway point for today I had to negotiate a group of rowdy cows who were congregated around a gate I needed to use, but they parted easily enough when I pushed through them and I was soon down at the gate where I knew I would find the first Ultreia plaque of the walk. If you’ve read any of my previous Southern Upland Way journals you’ll know what this means. They are a sign that a small cache of ‘waymerks’ is nearby. These are specially minted coins stored in a ‘kist’ or small container and there are thirteen of them along the length of the walk. This certainly adds an element of a treasure hunt to the walk and even to a grumpy old git like me, I do enjoy the thought of hunting them out again. This first kist is probably the easiest of all of them to find and it was no trouble at all to select a coin from the small supply remaining.
I took a break here, basking in the sun on a grassy step beside the gate and ate my Greggs scotch pie supplemented with a banana and a couple of wagon wheels and washed down with some luke warm juice. I took my boots off and aired my feet – something I’ve been disciplining myself to do more often, as the benefits far outweigh the time and effort it takes.
As I have for all my recent long walks, I’m carrying a water filter – the idea being to reduce the amount of fluids I need to carry each day. When I get to a nice water source I can filter up some cold water and squirt in my juice concentrate. The recent weather however has thrown a spanner in the works of that plan, as most of the streams are dried up or running really slowly and at no point today did I find any water I’d be comfortable filtering.
I’ve been in contact with several people who have walked the path recently, with a view to trying to gauge which streams ahead of me will be running, and the outlook isn’t great – which means I’m going to have to leave my accommodation in the morning with a full water bladder rather than carrying a minimal amount as I was hoping to be able to do. This means a much heavier pack than anticipated, but I’ve been doing many of my local training walks with a weighted backpack on – apparently it’s called ‘rucking’ – so I’m hoping that’s built up some tolerance for the heavier pack tomorrow, and the rest of the week. Staying in the same place for two nights means that I have almost nothing in my pack today.
The last ‘nice bit’ of today was across Mulloch Hill, where I followed a lovely narrow path through the heather passing the azure blue water of Knockquhassen reservoir, and which finished all too soon and dropped me back on the tarmac for the final stretch into Stranraer.
It was definitely getting much warmer as I walked through the town, and I was glad I’d taken the early bus. It’s not exactly baking hot but there was very little wind or breeze today and there were times I did feel quite hot. I would normally have searched for a pub to sit in and have a drink but I headed straight for the B&B in order to have a shower. It’s the FA Cup final this afternoon and I think I’d rather watch it in my room than in a pub, even if I could find a pub that was showing the game in Scotland.
I spent an hour writing up this journal and then headed out for an early tea. Stranraer has a huge selection of eateries, but once again Google came to my aid, and I made a beeline for the Royal Café, not too far from the B&B and with good reviews. I had a good meal and then went to Morrisons to stock up on supplies for the next two days. I have no idea what to expect tomorrow evening – I’m staying in a shed (literally) – so I’m having to carry food for tomorrow’s lunch(es), an evening meal, breakfast for Monday and at least two, and ideally three meal breaks for Monday’s 19 miles. That’s a lot of food, on top of what will need to be a lot of water, so I reckon I’m going to struggle a bit with the pack weight tomorrow. But we’ll see I guess. It’s almost 4.30 now, so time to watch City vs Palace in the FA Cup. C’mon City!