Galloway Forest

It wasn't raining today so we decided to take a gamble and go down to the Galloway Forest with the bikes for a spot of Mountain Biking. After a long and twisty road (had so stop for a bit as Fiona was going to be sick) we eventually got there.

The blue run was our target for the day as we've tackled blue runs at Glen Trool  without a problem but today we'd come to Kirroughtree, and the blue run here was different. The path starts from the car park and is immediately steep and extremely twisty (just like the roads down here!). Eilidh was really struggling with the slope and Avril (with Fiona on the Trailgator) couldn't get around the bends. 10 minutes in Avril decided to turn back and head for the green run whilst myself and Eilidh kept going.

There are a few caches around Kirroughtree and our first was to be Penninghame Postcards 2 - The Lade Walk. Simply put, we didn't find it as we had no idea where we were in the forest and no GPS signal. So after a wasted half hour searching we moved on.

Next came Penninghame Postcards which is near the banks of the Bruntis Loch. The clue and GPS reading we had indicated that we should be looking in the forest ten metres from the path. This meant searching amongst the pine trees which, being pine trees, were very sharp and scratchy. Torn and bleeding, I eventually found the cache. Both these caches were placed by Penninghame Primary school and ask that finders leave a couple of postcards. We didn't have any but we did have a couple of home made pictures so we left them instead plus our entire collection of Travel bugs and Geocoins. The next person to visit the cache will be well pleased!!

At this point Eilidh was getting tired and so we decided to head back to the visitors centre and after a rest and a play we took a wander to find Daltamie which was only two minutes walk away. This was an easy find so there was plenty time for another play at the playpark!

On the way home we managed to bag a couple more caches. the first was Cairnsmore View which is right at the roadside but which required us to take a slight detour. The next cache we found in Girvan when we stopped for a chippy. We wandered over to the habour for a seat and when I checked on my mobile to see if there were any caches in the town it turned out Harbour View was about ten metres away! Result!!

4 out of 5