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

New Galloway

With a population of just over 300, New Galloway holds the undisputed title of “Smallest Royal Burgh in Scotland”. This picturesque place is a planned burgh, having been laid out in the early 1600s by Viscount Kenmure. Little more than a single street of attractive stone cottages, the village lies beside the River Ken, noted for its fine angling. There’s a Town Hall and a church which is well worth visiting to see its unusual tombstones, an intriguing collection of curious carvings and some strange epitaphs.

Each year in early August New Galloway plays host to the Scottish Alternative Games. It’s a refreshing antidote to all the traditional games held in Scotland, where tossing the caber, throwing the hammer, shot putting and Highland dancing take place. Instead there are sports such as gird and cleek (hoop and stick) racing, hurlin’ (throwing) the curlin’ stane, snail racing, flingin’ the herd’s bunnet (throwing the herdsman’s bonnet) and tossin’ the sheaf.

This part of Kirkcudbright is known as the Glenkens, an area combining the high drama of lonely moorland with fertile, wooded valleys. To the west of New Galloway stretches Galloway Forest Park, the largest forest park in Britain, covering 300 square miles of forested hills, wild and rugged moorland and numerous lochs. It’s a vast and beautiful area criss-crossed by waymarked Forestry Commission trails and longer routes, such as the Southern Upland Way. It’s also home to a rich variety of fauna, feral goats, red deer, falcons and even golden eagles.

A mile to the south of New Galloway, near Loch Ken, are the ruins of Kenmure Castle, which belonged to the Gordon family. To say that the building is unlucky would be an understatement, as it has been burnt down three times and rebuilt twice. After the last burning in the 1880s, it was left as a shell.