We are being spoilt with this beautiful weather – long may it continue. Today’s adventure involved quite a bit of driving, but as our starting point was just over 30 miles away, we made the best of it. We arrived at Kirkcudbright a pretty riverside town, with loads of free parking, famous as a painters haven, with excellent ‘artists light’ and took a stroll around.

Wide streets, lined with painted terrace houses, shops, galleries a plenty, churches, lots of cars but hardly any folk to be seen. The ruins of a smallish castle stand proud in the centre of town.

The splendour of this beautiful blossom outside this ‘wee’ chapel just caught my eye.

As indeed did this rather splendid sculpture of a horse.

From Kirkcudbright we drove along the opposite side of the river to our first beach – Nun Mill Bay, at low tides this stretches to include several other bays of Milton Sands.

We didn’t stay here long as there were a few too many people around for Poppydog to run free and instead continued on to the furthest beach on this section of our tour – Brighouse Bay.

A pretty mostly sandy cove at the end of this peninsula, a very deep and sheltered cove, though by now the tide was racing in and quickly covering the exposed sand. Still it was quiet enough for us to enjoy a walk and for Poppydog to get a descent runaround.

Next stop on the way back towards Kirkcudbright was Ross Bay, though there wasn’t any parking for access to this beach – had we not got such a packed itinerary today, we would have walked round from Brighouse, but we contented ourselves with a quick photo stop.

From Kirkcudbright we drove through open farmland past Dundrennan Abbey.Where Queen Mary of Scots spent her last hours on Scottish soil.To Auchencairn Bay – opposite side of the Stewartry Coast to Rockcliffe.

A rather muddy beach, way to gloopy and slippery to make walking an option, so we carried on to Balcary Bay at the end of the peninsula passing this wonderful house on the way.

What a wonderful place to end this fabulous day, backed by an old estate house, converted into a series of holiday cottages, this empty sheltered beach, with a nice strip of soft dry sand backing the otherwise stony beach (the tide was quite high so covering the rest of the sandy bay).Another magical place to holiday if getting away from it all is your thing.We enjoyed our walk along this beach and would have loved to stay longer – some other time.Imagine living here?

Two thoughts of the day:

You can get a real sense of the sparseness of population in relation to the size of the country as you drive about through the open countryside with no sign of civilisation in sight.

Sorry rather a long one today!