Wigtownshire Ramblers Knockman Wood Garlies Castle January 2012

It's Saturday the 21st of January.
Today's walk led by Shorty is an amalgamation of a few walks we've done before.It's also an area I've covered myself quite a lot.
Here's some old links.
A walk-in-black-forest-or-knockman-wood
Garlies Castle
January 2009 walk
July 2011 walk

We broke the mould today.There were again 19 of us, but walking in from their home in Newton Stewart our newest members swelled the total to 21.The walk start is at Knockman Wood Car Park just a couple of hundred metres from Boreland Lodge.

It's wet and windy so good photographs are few since the camera stayed in the case a lot of the time.
All pictures today were taken on the Fuji S7000.It will be going back in storage as a back up now I realise my Powershot is a superior camera.A look at the unnamed chambered cairn was our first stop.

The cairn on top of Knockman Hill was our second objective.

The sky was a mixture of dark and light cloud. Good for silhouettes. Wigtown bay was a bright reflective sheen.

To the south, Cairsmore of Fleet was under cloud.

It's too windy to tarry too long so soon we're moving across the heather in an easterly direction.

Underfoot is dead bracken, heather, tussocks and bog................. but we've had worse.

Now here's an interesting ring of stones.I don't know and can't find any thing about it but I'm sure it wasn't built special for a couple of trees.

Trees were very much a feature of today's walk.
Another thing about the Fuji camera was the pictures I thought I'd taken but were missing when I looked later, the Evergreen Oak tree being one.

Now we've reached a path which we'll follow for a while.The hood on the walker on the right looks odd, I'll crop it for a closer look ?.

It's probably a manifestation of one of the saints. I'm not religious but January the 21st is St Agnes Day so who am I to argue !

Ahead of us now is Knockbracks with Drigmorn beyond.

The first of a couple of burn crossings.

Now we are moving south past the ruins of a former settlement. Probably connected to the  nearby Garlies Castle

Upon reaching the castle, and after a historical description from Shorty we had lunch.

A tour of the castle followed lunch.

Back on the move the most difficult burn crossing was the Peat Rig Strand.

Thanks to Scoop for the above collage.She got me nicely with a foot in the burn.

Now came a long squelchy section to reach the track that runs alongside the Penkiln burn.

This is nowadays known as Glenmalloch Lodge.It was originally built as a schoolhouse thanks to the philanthropic Harriet, Countess of Galloway. It can now be  rented from the Landmark Trust.
Click here for details.There's also a link on that page for a pdf giving a short history of the property. Very interesting.

With the sky as it was today, the bare trees looked particularly striking.

The farmers cairn at Torbain was our last point of interest.
A number of speculative answers were given to the origin of the initials MM on one of the boulders.Mine was Marilyn Monroe, but dismissed as probably wrong.
After a short walk back to the cars, a large group of Ramblers made their way to Cinnamon  for refreshments.A great way to end an excellent walk