Another fabulous day, cool breeze but lovely in the sheltered spots. Today we are bound for Southerness, a bit of a trek but mostly through open countryside, just touching on Dumfries. On the way I pulled into New Abbey and parked up briefly to take a look at the beautiful ruin of Sweetheart Abbey.

Built in 1275 for Dervorguilla, daughter of the Lord of Galloway in memory of her late husband – now unfortunately deemed unsafe – so you can look but not enter.

Love these beautiful arches – they have seen life.

From here we also made a quick stop at the Drumburn Viewing Point to take a look across Drum Bay.

Then we arrived in Southerness, just a few houses, a couple of pubs / cafes and a large holiday park, a free car park and at the end of the street the lighthouse.

The beach isn’t very inspiring at first glance, a rough footpath running over broken shells and shingle, a fair bit of green slippery rocks, some muddy patches of sand and then the odd little gem of delightful sand, only at lower tides. Firstly we walked around to the left (eastwards) to Gillfoot Bay.

It was quite windy in the bay, with a few people about and another holiday park running along the back of beach, after a while we turned about and passing the lighthouse again we ventured round to Southerness Bay to the west.

Here it was much warmer away from the wind and with no one about (how odd!), Poppydog got a chance for a good run about on a lovely little sandy spot that we had to ourselves.

We continued along the path to try to reach Mersehead Sands on the other side of the bay, which looked lovely and sandy and empty! However the footpath disappeared into the marshland in between – so we enjoyed our little stretch of sand and the sunshine.

And will visit Mersehead Sands another day.

Two thoughts of the day:

A fair bit of driving is going to be needed over this next week or so to visit the beaches of Dumfries and Galloway.

The fish have been jumping well again this evening.