Mull of Galloway

Nearest town:
Whithorn (30km ENE)
OS reference:
NX15683044
OS sheet:
82
Latitude:
54° 38' 6.46 N
Longitude:
4° 51' 22.43 W
Added to TMA by

Images

Image of Mull of Galloway (Cairn(s)) by spencer

From a mile away...in the landscape, on the horizon, left of the lighthouse. Doubtless similarily prominent from seaward: ‘we are/were here’.

Image credit: Mike Purslow
spencer
spencer Jan 19, 2016

Articles

Mull of Galloway

spencer
spencer Dec 13, 2015

This is my most visited site..a dozen times or more. I love it here, standing on top, looking across to the Isle of Man, the Lake District, Whithorn, Snowdon on a very clear day, and the Irish coast...... watching the birdlife, the resident roe deer, the seething high tide, and, after dark, the beam of the adjacent lighthouse sweeping overhead. To find, just drive south from Stranraer till the road ends. Half an hour non stop, but see how many times you stop en route for scenery and sites, not least the superb triple banked linear earthwork, increasingly believed to be Iron Age, that you pass through near your destination. Park in the car park north of the lighthouse, visit Gallie Craig, the great eatery – with loos – cum travel centre and emporium, walk towards the light. The cairn is on the skyline, left, as you approach. As Canmore – ID 61039 – describes, it’s been knocked about a bit. Until recently there was a flagpole atop. Two watertanks have been incised into its western side. This site is symbolic, and deserves an entry in TMA for this if no other reason. Like so much of Scotland’s ancient archaeology, degraded by the millennia and man, but still a prescence, battered but unbowed. It is the country’s most southern site. ‘Just’ a cairn... but a nation’s archaeology starts – or ends – here.

Sites within 20km of Mull of Galloway

Like all websites everywhere, we use cookies.