19th May 2025: New Luce to Bargrennan – 18.5 miles
I don’t think I slept very well last night, my watch says 62/100 which is very low for me, and I’m actually surprised it was so high. The bed was cramped and rickety and I wasn’t at all comfortable, but I must have dropped off, because I was woken about midnight by a passing dog walker calling her dog.
I was woken again at about 4am by the need to use the bucket and was fully awake and up by 5.15. Harry had agreed to drop me back at the point where I met the road the previous afternoon. That would save me 1.25 miles and he even said he’d be up at 6am when I said I wanted an early start. I was packed and ready by 5.45 and I’d even had time to eat the delicious scotch pie I’d picked up in Moffat on Friday. I’d only carried it 25 miles, which is nothing compared to the 100+ miles I carried one from the same shop a couple of years ago. I’d eventually abandoned that one as I was worried it may have gone off, so I was determined not to waste this one. It was excellent, even cold and 2 days old, and I washed it down with some cold juice.
I really, really didn’t want to leave a solid deposit for Harry to empty out of the bucket, it was bad enough leaving him a liquid one! To counter the inevitable urge I knew I’d get before I had to leave, I took a couple of Imodium the moment I woke up, and thankfully that seemed to do the trick.
Harry isn’t allowed to take any money for the use of the shed, bureaucratic red tape and all that, so I said I’d accidentally leave some money for the electric I’d used. He insisted it shouldn’t be very much, so I left £20 and I hope that covers his costs and a bit extra. It’s not the best place I’ve stayed in, but at a pinch it will serve Southern Upland Way walkers, probably more the folk who are backpacking the route, and who have a sleeping bag etc, than those who would normally be using B&Bs.
Harry knocked on about 5.50 and said he was warming up the van and to come out when I was ready. We were heading up the road a minute or two later. He dropped me back at Dranigower Bridge and I was walking by 6am – which meant my goal was now the 13.29 bus from Bargrennan, rather than the 16.45 bus. There’s no accommodation in Bargrennan anymore, the House o’Hill hotel that I’ve used the last two times I’ve done this walk, is closed for business, so I’ve had to book a hotel in Newton Stewart, 10 miles south along the road, and use the bus that stops at Bargrennan to get there. I needed to allow 7 and a half hours for the day’s walk, given my pace and the mileage, and 6am was the outer limit for this. In the end I made it with 20 mins to spare.
I made good time up the tarmac lane, it’s a mile and a half to Balmurrie and I did that in about 20 minutes, then it’s onto and across the moors. I figured any tarmac sections would allow me to gain some time, and allow me to take a bit more time through the woods and across the moors. I spotted a couple of red deer beside a burn beside the road and they bounded off as soon as they saw me. They reminded me to be wary of ticks, now I’m back in Scotland. I’ve been lucky so far, or my precautions have been effective, because I’ve only ever had one tick on me on all my Scottish walks, and that one hadn’t locked on by the time I flicked it off.
I remember the signage being scant along this section the last time I walked the route, but there are more posts now and I was never in any doubt where I should be heading. I have the route on my phone of course, plotted on Memory Map, but it’s so much easier to just follow the posts than constantly having to refer to the phone. The other major change since the last walk is the number of wind turbines. Not only are they more numerous, but they’re much closer to the path than they ever were before. I remember most of the surrounding hills having turbine farms on them, but the path now goes through and right beside them, and they’re still erecting them! The cotton grass is in full bloom at the moment and I got several views of masses of bobbing white heads, with the blades of turbines spinning behind them. I’m not a huge fan of wind farms on the hills, they should be offshore. I know they form an important part of the energy generation infrastructure, and as an individual piece of engineering they’re incredible, impressive and even beautiful but in vast numbers they despoil the views in every direction.
Exactly an hour after setting out I entered the forest. Even here you can’t escape the turbines. You can’t see them, but the whump, whump, whump of the spinning blades was audible even over the noise of the wind in the trees. I was hoping the recent dry spell had reduced the bog fest I remembered from my last walks here, and sure enough it was spongy, a little damp in spots, but mostly dry and easy to follow the thin path through the trees. I crossed the bridge over Purgatory Burn, which had water beneath it, but it was standing and very murky and stagnant and I wouldn’t have filtered it even if I’d needed to. I’d set out with almost 2 litres in my platypus, and 750ml of pre-mixed juice, as I wasn’t expecting any good water, until the water tap at Waterside farm, about 12 miles in. Leaving early meant the temperature was still quite low, and I was wearing my thicker fleece for the first time, so I expected my water usage would be lower and I figured I’d manage with what I had on board, for 12 miles.
I came upon a couple of huge stands of trees that had fallen across the path. Something that caused me loads of issues on my previous walks along this section. But these had been dealt with, and quite recently by the looks of it. The freshly cut ends of the trunks were visible on either side of the path, so I said a silent ‘thank you’ to the trail angel with the chainsaw and breezed through them. I soon arrived at the beehive bothy, where I had planned to stop, but it was only 7.30 and although I was ready for a sit down, I figured there could still be someone in there, asleep. So rather than potentially disturb someone, I pushed on to the bridge over Tarf Water, where I hoped for a good enough flow to filter some cold water. It wasn’t flowing fast enough for my liking, and I didn’t really need it bad enough to justify the faff, so I sat down on the wooden kerb of the bridge and had my first break of the morning. I fervently hoped that a massive timber lorry didn’t come along and force me to move – getting up from a low seat now takes quite a lot of time and effort! I had a banana and some chocolate hobnobs, and some of my juice. I allowed myself 15 minutes, I had too many miles ahead of me and the tempting deadline of the 13.29 bus to catch. I’d rather lollygag at the bus stop than relax here too long and then have to push the last mile or two, when I knew I’d be flagging.
Shortly after setting off again, along the wide forestry road, I passed a van flying a red flag and just beyond it a series of roped sections of the path, leading walkers through metal gates where the path intersects with a new road supporting the wind farm expansion. It seemed a bit “health and safety gone mad” to me, but other than having to avoid the many trip hazards left behind by the work crew and squeezing through the narrow gates, there were no issues and I soon left them behind, now on a good forest path. This forest section is lovely, despite the new intrusion of the whumping blades and some bits of the path, which is made from a hardcore gravel that has mostly been overgrown with grass, but in those sections where the grass hasn’t taken properly, the going was a bit hard on the soles. However, it’s still better than most of the path surfaces that make up the majority of Scotland’s Great Trails, and it would definitely be better than squelching through a traditional boggy forest path.
The climb up to the cairn at Craig-dhu exposed some “great” views down onto the construction site of multiple turbines and a little while later I watched a huge crane working on one of the blades of a turbine. After a couple of miles of the forest path I took the sharp right turn, beside the dry stane dike to meet the road at Derry. It’s not a proper road by any means, but I could make a good pace along it, so I plugged in my earphones and let my feet take over, while I enjoyed an audiobook. There are no views to speak of along the road, blocked as they are by the trees, so I just put my head down and plodded out the miles.
It’s about 3 miles from the buildings at Derry to the farm at Waterside where I knew there was a tap and my next planned stop. I covered that in 45 minutes or so and was soon turning into the drive, directed by the blue SUW finger post. I met the lady of the house who was out in the garden and she pointed me round to the tap. I had a long drink of the nice cold water and topped up my juice bottle. I chatted with the lady for a couple of minutes, and thanked her for volunteering her tap for walkers – it’s a great service to offer and I wanted her to know I certainly appreciated it. I didn’t want to take up too much of her time though, so I said my farewells and walked on a short distance before stopping on a wall for a breather and to add my juice concentrate into the water.
A few minutes after I set off again, and I saw a white pickup truck coming up the road towards me. The driver slowed down as he approached (which I always appreciate) and then stopped, winding down his passenger side window so we could talk. He introduced himself as the ranger for this part of the SUW and we had a good long natter about all sorts of stuff. I remembered the fallen trees that had been cleared from the path earlier and I thanked him profusely for that service. It sounds like he has a lot of trail miles to cover as ranger numbers have been reduced over the past few years, but he’s obviously not just sitting in his truck all day!
After saying my goodbyes to the ranger, it was only another mile or so along the road before I turned left, heading back into the trees. I found another handy bench beside the path and took a grateful rest under the canopy. It’s great to see so many new benches along the trail – I’m not sure how ‘new’ they actually are, but they certainly weren’t here when I last walked this section of the path in 2015. It was warm and still in the wood and the midges soon began to take advantage of the lack of a breeze and I wasn’t able to sit for as long as I would have liked.
The grass path was a delight after the last few miles of tarmac, but that had resulted in a good pace for the last hour or two and it was still only a little after 11am, and I’d already covered 13 miles. I spotted several tiger-striped dragon flies flitting along the path and spent a couple of minutes trying to get a decent photo of them (without success) – they were certainly more welcome than their smaller flying brethren that had forced me to leave my seat a few minutes earlier. The path was soon flanked by bluebells, fighting for space beside the new green shoots of the bracken that would eventually cover the sides of the hill.
The trees beside the path are mostly Christmas tree sized conifers along this stretch, with low-growth heather in front of them, but the path is lovely and I really enjoyed this section. I left the trees behind all too soon though, and dropped down to the road at Glenruther Lodge. It’s only a mile along the tarmac though before I climbed up the open moor of Hill of Ochiltree to the white-painted trig point on its summit. The views from here were absolutely spectacular, an almost 360-degree view of hills stretching out to the horizon. The sky was filled with stacks of white clouds casting their shadows on the fells, and another new bench meant I could sit and enjoy the vista. I couldn’t risk hanging around too long though, as I still had more than 2 miles to go, and the bus was due in about an hour.
The path down from trig point was better than I remember, but the weather probably had a lot to do with that – I seem to recall it was pretty awful last time I was here. This time however, the path was grassy and springy and the views were fantastic as I crossed the rough pasture land heading for the farm at Garchew. I remembered the mud and shit and the churned up path had been awful in both 2013 and 2015, but it was plain sailing today as I soon reached the road beside the farm buildings. The dry ground was a blessing and the path leaving the road beyond the farm was now easy to find, squeezed as it was between two barbed wire fences with the occasional section of rotting duck boards across the permanently wet bits. It wasn’t a delight by any means, but a great improvement over what it had once been. I reached the road at Bridgend at 13:09, with 20 minutes to spare before my bus arrived.
One of my favourite sayings is “nothing is ever easy”, and so it transpired as I reached the road, and the expected bus stop. I found a long stretch of road works, with traffic restricted to one lane and temporary traffic lights controlling the flow of vehicles. The sign for the bus stop was gone, and where it should have been was right in the middle of the one-way system between the traffic lights, so the bus wouldn’t have been able to stop. I was left with a quandary – which end of the one-way system would the bus stop at – I couldn’t be in both locations, and although it gave me a 50/50 chance to pick the right place, I wasn’t happy making that decision. There’s a house right beside the bridge, also in the middle of the one-way system, so I decided to knock on and see if they had any idea where the bus stop had been moved to. A friendly chap answered my knock and we chatted for a couple of minutes, but he wasn’t sure as he never used the bus, and he hadn’t noticed it stop recently.
I did consider walking up to Glen Trool holiday village, as I knew the bus stopped there too. That was just shy of 2 miles away, and I doubted I’d reach it before the bus arrived there. So I crossed the bridge and tried to find a logical and safe place a bus could stop, beyond the other set of traffic lights. Before I could find anywhere the bus came past, without slowing and turned right up the road towards Glen Trool. I was a bit worried now, but at least I knew the bus was still running, which was another possibility that had crossed my mind. I walked up to the Glen Trool turning and found a wide spot in the road and waited, hopefully, for the bus to return. About 10 minutes later, much to my relief – and pretty much bang on time – it pulled to a stop right next to my outstretched arm! I discussed my uncertainty over where to catch the bus with the driver, and he said he was doing his best to stop wherever people were standing if it was safe to do.
The bus dropped me off in the centre of Newton Stewart at 13:50 and I made a bee-line for the Sainsbury’s to stock up on items for this evening and for lunch tomorrow. I bought a big bottle of Diet Coke, a multi-pack of orange Clubs and a massive bag of BBQ Hula Hoops and headed for the Crown Hotel. It was only just after 2pm when I got there, but my room was ready and I was relieved to find an en-suite room with a shower. I jumped straight into the shower and luxuriated in the powerful stream for quite a while. The restorative power of a good shower should not be underestimated -I immediately felt clean, refreshed and even my legs felt less heavy than they had. It had been a long day and with the poor sleep I’d had last night it felt great to be all done by just after 2pm, meaning I had plenty of time to relax and recuperate before another long day tomorrow.
I had a mid-afternoon snack in my room while I listened to some music on my tablet and made some hurried notes in lieu of a full journal entry. [I deeply regret this decision now of course – now that I’m writing this up 18 months later, with only photos, a GPS tracklog and an old man’s memory to go on]. I wolfed down what was left of my chocolate hobnobs, and the cold Diet Coke and it never touched the sides!
At about 5pm I went downstairs into the bar and ordered a Steak and Ale pie for tea, along with a pint of Belhaven Black to wash it down – they were both excellent! I was tempted to follow up the first pint with another, but I don’t really drink any more, so I decided it was a bad plan, especially with the early start I needed in the morning. I spoke to reception as I went back upstairs and ordered the early breakfast time they did – 7am. I doubt I’ll be able to eat much more than a round of toast though, as I have a bus to catch at 07:25 tomorrow morning.
Back in my room I watched a movie on my tablet and it wasn’t long before the long day and lack of sleep last night took their toll. I was nodding off at 9pm, so decided to go with it and was almost certainly dead to the world by 9.30pm.