43. Dundrennan to Mutehill

Oh what a long time it’s been since I planned this section! Originally I intended to walk it in October 2023, but injuries, life, and the MoD saw to that.

As I’ve moaned about before, the MoD only publish their firing times for each month on the last day of the previous month, which makes planning rather difficult. But here we are, on a bank holiday weekend, and it seems the army have gone on holiday (don’t tell Putin) leaving their land open to miscreants like me to explore.

Dundrennan range, previously farmland, was acquired by the MoD in 1942 to train forces for the invasion of mainland Europe.

It’s now mainly used for weapons testing. I wonder if there’ll be some unexploded thingummies lying around, that could be cool. There could be plenty of depleted uranium, which is used in modern ammunition, as it is very dense, but not nearly so radioactive as natural uranium. Although there are health concerns about it, it’s mostly only if you eat it, so today I’ll be sticking mainly to chocolate.

I drive from my hotel in Kirkcudbright (Royal Suites Kirkcudbright, it’s clean, cheap, and opposite a kebab shop… perfect) to the end of the walk in Mutehill. The village of Mutehill consists of a bridge over the Buckland Burn and a few houses on the corner of the quiet A711. Parking isn’t that easy, so I decide to drive about ¾ of a mile south on a lane to a layby where there’s plenty of room. That lane is the final stretch of the walk anyway. I’ll then walk up to the main road to catch the bus to Dundrennan.

Just as I’m parking, my attention is caught by three little birds flitting about in the undergrowth…

…a goldfinch apparently (I’m quite bird-ignorant). That’s pretty.

For some reason all my photographs today look like they were taken in the 1950s. I must have knocked the settings switch on my camera off auto again, sorry about that. I forgot to check it like I normally do.

The tide is well out this morning, Kirkcudbright Bay silent and featureless.

Right, off we go, up the lane I’ve just driven down.

A large flock of gulls sit on the foreshore, an occasional hooting sound coming from amongst them, which I guess must be another type of bird. I don’t think gulls hoot.

I reach Mutehill in plenty of time for the bus, which arrives at the scheduled time and I flag it down (there’s no bus stop sign here so I’m not sure it’d stop otherwise). £1.50 to Dundrennan, a decent price that.

There are four people on the bus when I get on. Although they’re sitting apart they seem to know each other, and also talk to the driver using his first name. One has an English accent (south east), one Glasgow, and one sounds local. They all get off with me at Dundrennan. I guess that’s the nice thing about living in a small village, where everyone knows each other and what they’re up to. Lovely. I guess that’s the worst thing about living in a small village, where everyone knows each other and what they’re up to. Terrifying.

I take a few pictures in Dundrennan of things I photographed last time I was here. The old church, now up for auction, an old telephone box that’s unusually not been turned into a library, and the gap between the houses where an aeroplane crashed in the war (explained at the end of my Rascarrell to Dundrennan post), and the abbey of course… nearly forgot that.

I follow the A711 south-westwards, then shortly turn off south towards Port Mary. I feel like there’s something wrong, just not quite right. Maybe it’s just being tired still from yesterday’s walk, and concern about the deep cut on my hand.

Hearing a buzz above me I look up… it seems there’s always at least one spy plane following me on my walks. I never knew I was so important, it feels good.

It wasn’t the spy plane, I still feel wrong somehow. Looking down I find the reason…

I forgot to change into my walking shoes. Oh bugger, I’ve got to cover 11 miles today in street shoes – this could get uncomfortable. Oh, well, there’s nothing I can do about it now – it’s two hours until the next bus back to Mutehill, then another two to get back here! I’m clearly very out of practice with this “walking around the coast of Britain” malarkey, I forget to check so many things that were second nature back when I was walking every other week.

The lane is very pleasant, mostly because it’s downhill, but also from the heavily laden hawthorn bushes lining it.

At the bottom there’s a choice to make. I had planned on turning left, staying out of the range, and heading down to Port Mary, where Mary Queen of Scots left Scotland for the last time. However, there’s only a house there now, nothing to see, and the route through the range looks nicer. Both routes end up at the same point anyway.

A sign says there’s a risk of fire, but it looks more likely I’ll get blown up…

…like this tree…

The track has quite a few other tracks leading off it, but there appears to be a one-way system in place. I guess if you’re driving a tank down one of these lanes and meet another tank coming the other way it’s not so easy.

I’m reaching the end of the track, where I planned to turn right through Netherlaw Wood, the same route Ruth took back in 2017. However, there’s a problem.

Hmmm. I had wondered about this. My Komoot map – which is based on OpenStreetMap data – shows this track but with a No Entry mark on it, but as Ruth had come this way I thought I might get away with it. I wonder if there’s a way round this? There’s a track to my right, maybe I can skirt around this “Controlled Impact Area”? Let’s try that.

Either side of the track are derelict buildings. They look like buildings, houses and outhouses from the original farms, but abandoned and left to the ravages of the Scottish weather. The OS map says “Netherlaw House”, maybe this was it?

I reach the end of this short track, and arrive at a junction. Now I have a choice… another locked gate in the direction I want to go, or north up a lane all the way back to the A711.

Yes, you’ve guessed it. There’s no way I’m going all the way back to the road, after over a year waiting to get through these ranges, and even worse IT’S UPHILL. Let’s have a look at these gates. Normally I’d have no problem scaling over them, but the injury to my hand yesterday (see Gatehouse to Mossyard) means I’ve only really got one working hand. The fence beside the gate looks easier, and a short section has no barbed wire on top, so I go for that.

Now normally I don’t have too much concern about going places I’m not meant to go, but “Keep Out” signs from the MoD elicit a little more agitation than normal – especially with that “controlled impact” thing. I’m not too worried about getting stopped – I’ll make my excuses and probably just get chucked out – but I decide taking photographs in here could end up with me in a small room somewhere for a few hours or even days, and I just don’t have the time for that. I decide to put my camera in my rucksack, so there’s no photographs for the next mile or so. It was a very pleasant walk though, a steep ravine with a stream at the bottom (Netherlaw Burn).

After a mile or so I leave the wood, and the countryside opens up. A deer on the lane is startled at my presence and bounds off through the tall grass. My camera’s still in my rucksack of course, so I don’t get a picture of it.

Feeling a bit more confident now, I retrieve my camera. Dotted around the landscape are the rusted carcasses of old military equipment, maybe targets for the “controlled impacts”?

I find a slightly gruesome remain on the track, it looks like the front leg of a small deer.

Further along I find the other front leg, then the two rear legs, but no other remains. I wonder what animal would or could take a small deer in Scotland? I search on Google, but it tells me “There are effectively no natural predators that regularly hunt deer in the UK.” It’s too big for a fox surely? I give up. Later I listen to a radio programme with Ray Mears (the wild food, chocolate and hamburger lover) plugging his new book and they’re talking about large cats in Britain. Many think they’re hoaxes, but he said he’s seen one very close up. They’re probably escaped pets – lynxes or panthers or something like that. Ray said the one he saw was a jungle cat. Like me, he’d also found a dead baby roe deer, then found the cat (Times Radio here, at 55 mins). I didn’t find the cat.

The track reaches the top of a small hill, and woohoo!… there’s the sea.

According to the map, that’s either Back Bason, Rob’s Craig, or Mermaid’s Chair down there. Not the metal arch, the rocks. I’m not sure it matters much which one, it’s very nice whatever… not the metal arch, the rocks.

There are a few of these metal arches dotted around, I’ve no idea what they’re for, something military. The track has become quite grassy – not the best terrain for my shoes – and heads downhill towards the sea.

To my left, a high double-topped razor wire fence snakes along the brow of the hill. This, I think, is to stop people getting into the Electro-Magnetic Launch Facility (EMLF), a railgun research project that ran from 1993.

As an electrical/electronics engineer, I was hoping to get a look at this, but I think scaling that fence would be pushing my luck just a little too far. Here’s a technical aside for those remotely interested.

A railgun is basically a pair of rails on which a metal carriage is sat. Huge electrical currents are sent down the rails and through the carriage. The magnetic fields created cause the carriage to move forward at tremendous speed. The currents used are frightening – a million Amps typically. The railgun here in Kircudbright range was rated at 32 Megajoules, which sounds a lot, but a Joule is quite a small unit – it’s about the energy required to boil 100 kettles, or more appropriately, launch a 10kg object at 5700mph.

I guess that equivalence shows you just how much energy it takes to boil a full kettle! It’s also about 75 days running a 5W LED light.

Anyway, I can’t get in, so that’s all a bit academic.

In the far distance, I can see Little Ross island with its double lighthouses, the scene of that grisly murder that I described in Nun Mill Bay to Brighouse Bay.

The grassy track turns a right hand corner and heads north-west in a dead straight line.

I come across an old bunker and have a quick look inside – just a pile of wooden stake points ready for a nice fire.

I’m feeling a bit tired after yesterday’s walk and the start of this one – I haven’t walked in months. I check Komoot which tells me I’m about two fifths through – not even half way, oh dear! I decide to stop for a while, and lie down on the soft grass, very peaceful.

After twenty minutes it occurs to me that I can’t stay there all day. On we go. Walking in a straight line is so tedious! Eventually the track turns a corner and….

…it turns out I was still in the Controlled Impact Area. Oh well, since the army are on their hols this weekend there’s no harm done. With this gateway the barbed wire comes right up to the gate, so I have to climb over the gate itself, not too easy one-handed.

I make it over, and just a few hundred yards further on I come across a long-abandoned old house and barn, now overrun by mature trees. The OS map says “Mullock”.

The grassy track eventually comes to a T-junction with a metalled lane. Southwards heads to the sea at Mullock Bay, but is a dead end. As much as I’m desperate to visit another stony beach (not much at all), I decide to head north as Komoot tells me to. This track heads slightly uphill until it comes to another junction with a concrete paved road. There are so many tracks and roads in this range! I head westwards.

Every so often there are wider areas – passing places for tanks I guess – and paved areas. Parking for tanks?

Ooh, this is a nice coloured plant… Common Mullein apparently (thanks Flora Incognita).

Pretty, but not as useful as this…

…although they look a bit small and sour.

To my surprise, round the next corner I come across a house. Not an abandoned derelict house, but a lived-in house. The map says “Howwell House”. The answer is “a lot better than the last houses I saw“… I’ll get me coat.

Continuing westwards, the quality of the building stock deteriorates right back down again. It must be strange living round here.

I pass another lived-in house with a huge high-walled garden – it must be amazing in there, a complete micro-climate. “Balmae” according to the OS map.

A little further I come across a new building, presumably owned by the MoD. It has toilet doors, and a big garage door. Some command post for during the exercises maybe?

Coming as somewhat of a surprise to me, Komoot tells me (and so does a yellow arrow hiking route marker post) to head down a rough path directly opposite the building. This path seems a bit forgotten, but I always do as I’m told as you know, so off I go.

The path winds through the trees for a couple of hundred yards before arriving at a gate into a field, sweeping down toward the sea. I follow the track down the hill.

At the top of the hill is a lookout post… but it seems no-one’s at home.

The track eventually ends at a more substantial lookout post, this one with its own wind turbine and portaloo, but also un-manned.

Beyond this point the path continues as just a vague depression in the mossy grass close to the cliff edge. Very pleasant for cliff walking, but not so nice in my white trainers. This is Torr’s Point, and is the end of the Kirkcudbright Ranges, and the start of the route up the eastern side of Kirkcudbright Bay.

The path drops gradually downhill, enters a wood and parallels the edge of the water.

A snazzy catamaran is moored up in the bay, next to a small sandy beach, and a small white dog trots around the deck.

I come across some incongruous road signs. Have they been dumped here by someone for a laugh? “ROAD CLOSED” and “HEAVY PLANT CROSSING”?

Round the corner I see why.

I was expecting the squat concrete lump of Bathinghouse Bay lifeboat station along here, but it seems that monstrosity has been demolished for a brand new boathouse. It duly goes in my collection of lifeboat stations.

According to this walking guide from the Solway Firth Partnership, the old life boat station and slipway here was constructed in 1892 to replace the first lifeboat station located in Kirkcudbright that I passed in my section Mutehill to Nun Mill Bay. Apparently, despite the longer journey for the crew to reach the lifeboat, the new location greatly reduced the time taken to get the boat out onto the open sea.

A passing Red Admiral also goes into the animals collection.

The track ends at a locked gate. They’ve even locked the pedestrian gate. What’s the point of that?… when it’s so easy to climb over.

The track opens out into a pleasant drive, mown grass on the waterside and very nice big houses the other side. This area is called “The Lake” according to the OS map, I guess named from the body of the sea here called “Manxman’s Lake” (see Mutehill to Nun Mill Bay for the reason for that). This seems to be the posh end of Mutehill. I’m not sure there is a rough end.

Ah, here’s the rough end. Someone living in a bus. Reading other coastal walkers’ blogs, this has been here for quite a few years.

My legs thank me that my car is parked right here, and not three quarters of a mile up the lane at Mutehill. I collapse on the driver’s seat and take those bloody shoes off… heaven!

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This walk was completed on 23rd August 2025, and was about 10.8 miles long. Here are the real-time recorded maps of the two sections of today’s route, which you can pan and zoom around: