Dumfries and Galloway. Dumfries and Galloway guide

For those who turn left at Gretna Green, leaving the throng heading north, it’s like being given the keys to the Secret Garden. It’s a land that might have been penned by a writer, where gorse glows gold atop rugged granite coves, trees are cast horizontal by the wind on clifftops that drop onto treacherous shifting sands, black cattle with wide white belts graze in gloriously unkempt meadows, and whitewashed fishing villages bask like paperchains beside cyan waters. Flowers are as vivid as the eye can imagine – explosions of pink fuschia and orange montbretia – and the hills are huge and remote with views over lochans, rivers and wooded valleys. It feels quiet, because this vast landscape (it’s almost 2,500 square miles) contains one of the country’s smallest unitary authorities: there are just 60 people per square mile.

The hub of the region is Dumfries – the ‘Queen of the South’ – famed for its connection with Robert Burns, who worked, wrote and drank in the town in his final years. Head west from here towards the Machars Peninsula, where empty moorland slopes down to beaches with rock pools and views to the Rhins, and you’ll find Wigtown, the National Book Town, with wizened streets lined with more than 20 independent bookshops. It's on the same peninsula as Isle of Whithorn, one of Scotland’s earliest Christian centres. Eastwards along the Solway Firth AONB, Kirkcudbright is the official ‘Artists’ Town’. This honeycomb of colourful Georgian and Victorian facades on the Scottish Riviera ripples out from a busy natural harbour where fishing boats bring in scallops. It’s close to food town Castle Douglas. Inland from here there’s historical Annan, which has strong links with Robert the Bruce, and Moffat, with a lively cultural scene amid hills that have been dubbed the mini Highlands.

There are ten regional scenic areas in Dumfries and Galloway, including the Moffat and Langholm hills and the rocky Rhins coast around the pretty seaside town Stranraer where seabirds nestle. There are also the national scenic areas of the Nith Estuary, East Stewartry Coast and Fleet Valley. At the core of the region, in the Galloway Forest, is the UK and Europe’s first Dark Sky Park. The park lies in Scotland’s first biosphere – the Galloway and Southern Ayrshire UNESCO Biosphere, which meanders across burns, lochs, hills, bogs and rivers where species including red deer, wild goats and pine martens roam.