Detour #297: A Speedy Excursion On Scotland’s South West Coastal 300

It’s less-travelled than the NC500 but Scotland’s SWC300 is every bit as inviting.

Yet again I’m a little too fast as I take a corner on a slight crest but I don’t die and instead an amazing panorama of sea, beaches, inlets and islands opens up through the windscreen.

Wow. I swear out loud. Again. Even though I’m alone in the car.

What a driving route I’m discovering. Empty beaches, glittering lochs, misty mountains and deep, dark twisting forests. It’s an ideal sequence of beautiful views you can see from the driver’s seat. And I bet you’ve never heard of it.

Firstly, it’s in Scotland – the midge-less, och-aye-free, unpretentious southwest corner where you’ll never get trapped with a professional kilted Scotsman playing bagpipes for a coachload of admiring tourists from the Far East.

Instead, I am in little-known Dumfries and Galloway, exploring a new roadtrip route called the South West Coastal 300.

You’ve probably heard of the popular Scottish roadtrip called the NC500 that starts and finishes in Inverness. Around 250 miles further south, saving a day’s round-trip, they’ve introduced this smaller sibling, the SWC300.

While the North Coast 500 is a momentous, marathon trek around the entire northern coast of Great Britain, the SWC300 is a quick pretty pootle, circuiting a little-known region. You’ll do those 300 miles in a weekend. But it will be a weekend you’ll remember forever.

The route starts in an easy place: you leave the A74M at Lockerbie, just over the border from England.

Immediately, you’re in a different world. I head west, cajoling my hired Nissan Juke into a driving style it had never thought possible.

I cling as close as sat nav can get me to the coast of the Solway Firth. Roads wiggle via beaches, woods and little fishing villages, with the backdrop of Lake District peaks across the water.

Mennock Pass

The Mac-tarmac turns out to be wide, smooth and quiet. I was supposed to stop in Dumfries, Castle Douglas, and Newton Stewart that day but, hey, you know when you’re on a roll. Old town centres seem to lose their appeal. In fact, I forget my job of being a proper travel writer. I don’t take any notes or photos.

As I passed plenty of proper sights, like a triangular medieval castle, romantic ruins of an abbey and the pastel-painted ‘Artists Town’ of Kirkudbright, but it the SWC300 is such a brilliant addictive drive I can’t be bothered to park and look closely. I simply drive non-stop for almost 100 miles to Wigtown.

Dunskey Castle

Here I stay overnight in Scotland’s ‘Book Town’. There’s bookshops, grey pebble-dash walls and hardy townsfolk who seem to play bowls with grim determination on a square in the middle of the town late into the evening. In the rain.

I go in the only pub, The Galloway. It’s a lovely friendly little place but I can’t understand a word of the heavy local accent. Feeling very English, I just point at the beer I want. Then I enjoy comfort food of shepherd’s pie and apple crumble at the charming Hillcrest guesthouse. The landlady points out the free ‘sweetie jar’ in the wood-panelled hall.

Day two starts with more of the same. Great coast roads lead down to the Isle of Whithorn (Try fresh seafood at the Steampacket Inn. Locals swear the previous landlord won the pub in a game of cards) and the windswept Mull of Galloway, Scotland’s most southerly point (Jump out of the car and you can see Ireland, England and the Isle of Man… if you don’t get swept from the cliff by gale-force winds).

Mull of Galloway

Then the route turns north. Along the west coast, Portpatrick is a classic harbour village that could be in Cornwall but I become fixated with the constant granite pimple of Ailsa Craig island ten miles off the shore. It’s over 1,000ft high and just two miles wide. It looks like the head of a gigantic monster about to burst up out of the Irish Sea. Or maybe I’ve watched too many Godzilla films.

Talking of unusual-shaped heads, the route passes Donald Trump’s Turnberry Resort among flat, swaying grassy dunes. It’s probably really expensive and luxurious and golfers rave about the courses (or is that in the restaurant?) but it looks like a big old Victorian mental hospital from the road.  

Then the route turns inland for its most surprising stretch. Think Scotland and you imagine snowy peaks in the Highlands, hundreds of miles further north. This area of ‘Southern Uplands’ sounds like a few moderate English-style hills.

Of course it’s not. This is Scotland. The glorious open road sweeps through some serious high bits with ski resorts – and even Scotland’s highest village.

In fact, driving into Wanlockhead is one of the highlights of the trip. A red squirrel sits in the middle of the road and won’t move till I sound my horn.

A village 1,531ft up in the mountains must attract a certain type of strange resident. As an indication Scotland’s highest pub has a replica of the orange Dukes of Hazzard ‘General Lee’ car parked outside and a wig-wam that you can sleep in for £25 a night.

In the bar there’s a stolen 40mph speed limit sign on the wall and a notice saying ‘unsupervised children will be given an espresso and a puppy’. The menu includes the ‘I Don’t Care Burger’ with or without cheese at £7.50.

I drive on. The twisting descent through pink sunset-lit hills is another superb stretch. The Nissan Juke is living the dream.

I have a half-hearted race with a Mad Max escapee on a huge trike before he disappears in the dust on a long straight. I arrive in the genteel spa town of Moffat under more rolling green mountains to enjoy a monumental ‘haggis Scotch egg’ and hundreds of cushions on a huge sumptuous bed at the Moffat House Hotel. The lampshades are made of antlers and in the morning they serve porridge with fresh strawberries.

I’m almost back on the A74M, heading home and life doesn’t get much better.

Words Simon Heptinstall Twitter | Instagram

Photography Damian Shields / Visit Scotland

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ROADBOOK

CLASS: Ocean Drive

NAME: South West Coast 300

ROUTE: Launceston to Binalong Bay

COUNTRY: SCotland

Distance: 300 Miles

CLick here for interactive map

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