On a map, the Galloway Rhins look like the head of a peak: a peninsula 45 kilometers long and 5 kilometers wide linked by a narrow spit of land to Dumfries and Galloway in southwestern Scotland.
And once you cross, you feel like you’ve entered a secret world.
It was this isolation that attracted two famous former visitors to a Victorian hunting lodge in a hidden cove framed by grassy headlands during the Second World War.
Knockinaam Lodge, now a ten-bedroom luxury hotel with a huge lawn leading to a shingle beach, is where, in May 1944, an important meeting between Winston Churchill and General Dwight Eisenhower took place. The couple spent two days planning D-Day at this quiet, hidden location.
Nowadays, you can scramble up a track to a cliff path that takes you on rollercoasters over sheer cliffs covered in purple heather, before plunging down ravines to wave-lashed sea caves.
Martin Symington explores the Rhins of Galloway in south-west Scotland. The ruins of Dunskey Castle are shown here.
Isolated: Knockinaam Lodge (pictured) is where Winston Churchill and General Dwight Eisenhower spent two days planning D-Day in May 1944, Martin reveals.
Mull of Galloway is home to protected colonies of gulls, as seen here, reveals Martin
After about an hour, you’ll reach the haunting ruins of 12th-century Dunskey Castle, spectacularly perched on a windswept outcrop.
From these ruins, a path winds down to Portpatrick. The small town, scattered around a scallop-shaped harbour, is a charming place and the quayside cafes sell top-notch fresh crab sandwiches.
Single track roads crisscross the peninsula. Winding and after a while you reach an alley lined with palm trees. This leads to the Logan Botanical Garden, established on the Rhine due to an unusual microclimate created by the warming waters of the Gulf Stream. I wander through eucalyptus forests and glades of extravagant exoticism that evoke New Zealand, Chile and Vietnam.
Martin visits the small port town of Portpatrick (above). It’s a “lovely place,” he says.
Above is a lighthouse on Mull of Galloway, which is the southernmost point in Scotland.
Leaving this incongruous world behind, another winding road leads up the narrow peninsula to Mull of Galloway, the southernmost point of Scotland.
The headland here is an RSPB nature reserve, with protected colonies of guillemots and gulls whose nests are on the cliffs.
A white beacon highlights the far end. You pay to climb 115 steps to the top, from where an astonishing 360-degree panorama unfolds. Here you feel very far from anywhere, perfect for a clandestine meeting, as Churchill and Eisenhower discovered.
