The Machars (from the Gaelic machair - a fertile grassy plain) is the triangular bit of Wigtownshire which juts into the Solway Firth between Luce Bay and Wigtown Bay. Not as scenic as the Stewartry, it has its own quiet charm and lots of history, and is thankfully overlooked by most potential visitors. It’s where my father’s side of my family comes from.
Taking the A75 today from Gatehouse to Newton Stewart, I turned south by a series of back roads to the Standing Stones of Torhouse: an ancient stone circle surrounding the remains of a stone tomb. Nineteenth century forebears of mine lived nearby at Torhousemuir.
From Torhouse, I rode to Wigtown, the one time county town. Although it has some fine old houses, it used to be the quietest, deadest place imaginable. However, a cluster of book shops took root there, and it was eventually designated as Scotland’s National Book Town. This attracted more book shops, and it is now transformed into quite a bustling little place. The internationally acclaimed Wigtown Book Festival takes place there every year, and attracts the great and the good of the literary world.
From Wigtown I headed past Bladnoch, with its distillery, to Whauphill, the village where my dad grew up. (Whaup is the local name for a curlew.) Much has changed there, but the row of cottages where he lived in the late 1920s/early 1930s is still there, as is the viiage school at Kirkinner two or three miles away, to which he used to have to walk every day.
A couple of miles from Whauphill, I stopped at a roadside cottage, where I remember being taken as a child about 70 years ago to visit an old lady whom my dad knew from his youth. I could see a sidecar outfit across the far side of the garden. The owner came over to speak to me, and I explained why I had stopped. He recognised the old lady’s family name as being the former owners of the cottage many years ago. He was a fellow bike enthusiast, the same age as me, and he showed me some of his bikes, including a Street Twin, a big Panther, an Ariel Huntmaster and a BMW 1150GS. We had a great chat before I set off again for Whithorn a few miles further on.
Whithorn is a large village, very quiet, with some fine houses and an imposing main street. There is a pend leading to the remains of the old Whithorn Priory.
From Whithorn, it was just a few miles further to Isle of Whithorn on the southern tip of the Machars. It’s a pretty village with a nice harbour, and there were a few visitors roaming about in the sunshine. (Despite the name, it hasn’t been an actual island for hundreds of years.) I sailed there from Kirkcudbright many years ago with a friend, and we spent a night tied up alongside the harbour wall there after a few pints at the Steam Packet Inn.
Turning north again, I rode to another harbour village, Garlieston, with its long crescent of traditional houses facing across the bay towards the harbour quay.
From Garlieston, I rode north to Newton Stewart for some petrol, and then headed homewards, dicing with lorries all the way along the A75. It was an interesting day out for me given my connections with the area.
