Tour de Galloway day 1: Newton Stewart to Wigtown Loop

Route – Newton Stewart to Wigtown to Challoch to Newton Stewart. For route map click here.

See route on Strava.

• Weather – Sunny at first, then clouding over. Warm with light winds.
• Bike Type – Road bike
• Distance travelled – 23.27 miles
• Riding time – 1 hour 31 minutes
• Maximum speed – 27.7 mph
• Average speed – 15.3 mph
• Height climbed – 832 feet

For our summer holidays this year we went to Dumfries and Galloway in the south-west of Scotland. We stayed in very nice self-catering accomodation at Nether Barr just outside the town of Newton Stewart and since the weather forecast looked good for the whole week, we decided to bring our bikes. There’s lots of other things to do in Dumfries and Galloway apart from riding a bike (going to the beach was my favourite activity!) but I was still determined to make sure I got out cycling everyday of the holidays, even if just for a short ride. Dad came up with the suggestion that since the Tour de France had just started, we should have our very own “Tour de Galloway”, so after tea on our first evening we headed rode off into the sunshine to begin the first stage of the Tour…

National Cycle Route no.73 goes right past Nether Barr so we followed that south all the way to Wigtown. At first you have a choice of the A714 road or a shared use path. The path looked a bit gravelly is places and the road seemed fairly quiet so we chose that for the first half mile or so. We then turned left onto a very narrow, virtually traffic-free road which took us down very close to the River Cree estuary and then the Sound of Fleet. Along the way we enjoyed great views of the impressive looking hill called Cairnsmore of Fleet on the other side of the water, as well as a view of the higher mountains in the Galloway Forest Park behind us. The road was very straight and almost completely flat so we were able to go very fast along here. However, the surface varied from nice and smooth to very bumpy with grass growing down the middle of the road. This was pretty typical of most of the roads we cycled on in the area – they were either brilliant or horrendous, with nothing in between! Anyway, after 5 or 6 flat miles we came to our first hill of the day, a rather steep but short climb which took us up into the town of Wigtown.

Wigtown is famous for being Scotland’s book town. There’s loads of nice book shops here – even all the cafes sell books too – but they were all closed for the day so we just cycled through the town centre and then out into the countryside again on the B733 road. This road was very quiet, was mainly quite flat with just a few short ups and downs and took us past countless fields of cows (there seem to be cows everywhere down here!). After a while, we came to a sign for Newton Stewart and followed it, turning right onto a very narrow back road which took us through some rather remote land (and more cow fields), climbing relatively high up at first and then gradually descending down the other side of the small hill. The views to the hills in the north were very nice as we sped down the hill. This road had been covered in loose chippings not to long ago so although it wasn’t bumpy, it wasn’t really the nicest road to cycle on with a road bike.

Before too long we reached a junction with the busiest main road in the area, the A75. We could have turned right and taken the main road a mile or so back to our accomodation. But we like a long cut so we crossed straight over onto what Google Maps says is an old military road. The road surface was certainly old and worn out with very poorly filled in pot holes all along the way. The line of grass along the middle was at times wider than the remaining tarmac! This road was long and straight and totally flat (apart from the bumps…) and it seemed like the road to nowhere as there’s no places along the way, just trees and fields and millions of rabbits. At one point we began to wonder if the road would ever end. Eventually it did though and we turned right onto the B7027, speeding down the hill for the short distance until we joined the A714 once more. This road took us mostly downhill the last mile or so to Newton Stewart. It was especially fast just as we entered the town and speed sensor warned us that we were going 30 mph. Then we had an unexpectedly steep hill to climb through the town centre before heading back out of the town. At the outskirts we had to cross the roundabout on the A75 road which we could have passed through much earlier if we hadn’t taken the long, wacky, bumpy back road. A long, wacky, bumpy back road way is always much more enjoyable than a mile of a busy road though – don’t you agree?

So after one last little sprint south along the A714, we arrived back at Nether Barr. Our first impressions of Galloway is that it’s a lot less hilly than Midlothian and the Borders but it was still a very pleasant, extremely quiet and scenic place to place to cycle. Once the bikes were packed away, I immediately got out my map to start planning the route for day 2 of the Tour de Galloway…