Our easy-to-use website contains details and locations of places to visit around this area. Please select from:

	Places to Stay: Bed and Breakfast Hotels and Guest Houses Pubs with Accommodation Self Catering
	Places to Eat and Drink: Cafes, Coffee & Tea Shops Pubs serving Food Restaurants and Bistros
	Places of Interest: Places to Visit
	Gardens Centres: Garden Centres/Nurseries
	Specialist Shops: Antiques & Restoration Arts and Crafts Fashions Gifts Home and Garden Jewellery Food and Drink Shops

Dalmellington

This former mining village sits on the banks of the Doon. Over the last few years, it has exploited its rich heritage, and created some visitor centres and museums that explain the village’s industrial past. The Dunaskin Open Air Museum covers 110 acres and has many facets, each of which is well worth exploring. The Dalmellington Iron Works were first opened in the 1840s, and are now the largest restored Victorian Ironworks in Europe. Other attractions include the Brickworks and the Scottish Industrial Railway Centre, where steam trains run on a restored track. The Cathcartson Centre in the village is housed in weaving cottages dating from the 18th century and shows how weavers lived long ago.

Dalmellington is the starting point for the new Scottish Coal Cycle Route which runs from Dalmellington to Coalburn, 40 miles away in Lanarkshire. It is part of the National Cycle Network.

A couple of miles beyond Dalmellington is a minor road that takes you to lovely Loch Doon, surrounded by lonely hills and moorland, and the source of the river that Burns wrote about. It was here, during World War I, that a School of Aerial Gunnery was proposed. Millions of pounds were wasted on it before the plans were finally abandoned. When a hydroelectric scheme was built in the 1930s, the water level of the loch was raised. Loch Doon Castle, which stood on an island in the loch, was dismantled stone by stone and reassembled on the shore, where it can still be seen.

In the late 1970s it was announced that 32 deep tunnels would be bored in the hills surrounding the loch to store most of Britain’s radioactive waste. After many protests by local people, the idea was abandoned.