The Crook of Baldoon – Wigtown Bay's Wild Merse
A few hours.
The route
The Crook of Baldoon is the RSPB's wide, wild corner of saltmarsh and mudflat on Wigtown Bay, with Cairnsmore of Fleet and the Galloway Hills behind.
Every winter thousands of geese and swans come in to feed and roost on the merse (the saltmarsh), and redwings and fieldfares strip the hawthorns. Then it's a short drive to Wigtown, Scotland's book town, for lunch and a browse.
Before you go
Book accommodation nearby
If you are staying over: here are ours nearest where the day starts and ends.
The day
Wigtown Bay
A breezy walk over the merse with the hills across the bay, then a warm lunch among the bookshops.
About three and a half hours
The Crook of Baldoon
The Crook of Baldoon's car park, with 15 spaces, is at the end of a potholed single-track road, Shell Road by Newton. From the car park a path of compacted rubble and stone runs north to the south bank of the River Bladnoch, towards Wigtown harbour. A 300-metre path beside the big lagoon by the entrance road suits wheelchairs. The view is wide open: saltmarsh and mudflats, with Cairnsmore of Fleet and the Galloway Hills behind. Between December and March thousands of pink-footed and barnacle geese, with shelducks and whooper and mute swans, feed and roost on the merse. Redwings and fieldfares come to the hawthorns and crab apples, and lapwings, wheatears, skylarks and meadow pipits use the grassland and the upper saltmarsh. None of it is promised on any one day. Cattle and their calves graze the merse: never walk between a cow and her calf, and step off the path round them if you need to. Keep dogs close, preferably on a short lead, from 1 April to 15 August and near the cattle. There are no toilets here; the nearest are in Wigtown. It's open ground with no lighting, so go in daylight.
13 min by car
Café Rendezvous
Lunch
Lunch is in Wigtown, 13 minutes' drive away, at Café Rendezvous on Agnew Crescent. Everything is made from scratch, much of it from local ingredients, with a specials board that changes daily and cakes baked on the premises. It usually opens Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 4.30pm, but ring 01988 402074 to check before you go, above all over Christmas and New Year. The town's bookshops are a short walk away for afterwards.
If it rains
The merse is open ground with no shelter; on a wet day keep to the short lagoon path, then lunch indoors in Wigtown and an hour in its bookshops.
Make it a weekend
More days out in Dumfries and Galloway.
Photographs by Maggie Pinkney and Dave Sage via Google