Over breakfast we chatted to a poet who was also staying at our B&B, he was in town to help with the Big Lit (a break-away from the Dumfries and and Galloway Arts festival).
The routine of packing panniers and putting aside some breakfast in a Tupperware for the road is now well rehearsed. So an hour into the day we find somewhere scenic to have our snack-usually this is a bench or sea wall.
Sue was like a Duracell bunny on the climb out of Gatehouse of Fleet; on certain gradients she is off! With open moorland and fine views of the Galloway hills the excursion from the coast is magnificent.
We climbed on the NCN 7 for about 8km before enjoying the long decent to Creetown and a stretch of old railway and forest road to Newton Stewart.
At Newton Stewart we got some fuel for the camping stove (one step closer to pitching the tent) and left the number 7 for the time being. We were pleased to find yet another Sustrans route (73) that took us to the third in the F, A, B trilogy (Food, Art, Books), Wigtown, "Scotland's book town". With over 20 book related businesses and a fine French-gothic style county building hosting the annual book festival, this is clearly Hay-on-Wye of the North.
Figures:
Distance:- 44.7 km
Cycle Time:- 3 hours 12 minutes
Average speed:- 13.9 kph
Total Distance:- 1664 km
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