There are two maps above for the reason that my Garmin device closed down the journey when we lingered too long on a coffee break at Lady Bay and I had to start it again when we set off.
From the foghorn, we set off on the hard path that runs from the lighthouse out towards Port Leen. Avoiding the beach, we took a line to the back of the Port to head out to Milleur Point, at the tip of Loch Ryan. The views the early morning light were gorgeous, the colours bright and vibrant. The Argyll coastline was visible to the north-west, with Ailsa Craig and Arran dominating the foreground. Just before we passed out of close view of the lighthouse the friendly, local seal had made it on to the rock (see below). For almost the whole of this stretch out to Milleur Point, the forlorn cry of seals followed us on the breeze, telling tales of woe about the hard life at sea.
We were blessed by early morning sun that created lovely light conditions. A small, white sailboat, rising and falling on the waves provided food for romantic notions. The perspective forward on this short section is at first perplexing as you see what are the hills above Cairnryan but you are not quite seeing the mouth of the loch running out to sea which would help to locate them. Eventually, the penny drops that you are not still looking at the Rhins of Galloway, but rather the start of the Ayrshire Coastal Path on the other side of Loch Ryan, with the white houses of Ballantrae sitting at the bottom of Mains Hill.
Unlike yesterday, there was some bird life on the rocky shore with Shags and Cormorants roosting on the smaller headlands and, where there was beach to be seen, some of the smaller waders like Ring-necked Plovers were hustling about. Two hours of walking saw us reach Milleur Point at the mouth of Loch Ryan and we stopped to stand and admire the view out over the North Channel as far as the Argyll coast.
Before we reached Milleur Point we bumped into the farmer mentioned earlier, Taz. We were walking along the fence line, I think on Stronach Hill, when we saw a wee vehicle beetling towards us from a farmhouse. Luckily, we were on the seaward side of the fence so felt safe that we were not trespassing. Sheer luck on our part as we were walking on the seaward side because the fields earlier were full of cows. The farmer, with the nickname of Taz, had come to find out what we were about. In our conversation he told us he was carrying broken ribs after one of the cows in the said filed had head butted him when he was inspecting the herd.
As noted earlier, there is disagreement about the right to roam here on account of the matter of damages in the event of injury to walkers. Tax is one of the farmers holding out from signing up to the Rhins of Galloway Coastal Path. As part of our explanation about our coastal walk, we mentioned that friends of ours had farmed some years ago further down the Rhins from where he was. Turned out they were childhood friends and that he had danced at their wedding many years ago. Small world!
When on the shore, many of the rocks were covered in bright, vivid, yellow verdigris and the air had that tangy, salty taste to it that made you think you were actually eating seaweed, which you could see in abundance at the top of the beaches of the many small coves and bays. Behind us, the lighthouse had slipped back on the horizon, at times lost to sight behind a headland or a low hill feature. Once we turned the corner at Milleur Point it was gone from sight.
Our luck continued as we moved along the loch side crossing field after field. The route remained high but turned slightly more inland as we approached Broad Port and headed for the small steading of Low Portencalzie. From roughly parallel with Broad Port, the path went downhill to the steading where we took up a track to return us to the shoreline and the delightful Lady Bay. So nice was it here, with a smattering of adults and children on the beach, that we stopped for lunch and lay back on the sand just to enjoy the sunshine.
Just after Portbeg, the Clachan Heughs headland (almost three hundred feet) juts out over the water. Whether you could go round at low tide I do not know, but there was no way forward for us on an incoming tide. We debated whether or not to try and go over the Heughs and try to find a path through the forest, albeit there is no path uphill, but were deterred by the the herd of cows, thick stands of gorse and what seemed like pretty thick forest on the Heughs. The OS map showed a number of field boundaries as well that would need to be climbed and that also put us off. Tired from yesterday and the rough walking today, we decided to be kind to ourselves, take a route inland and to follow the road as far as Kirkcolm.
Staying on the shore from Wig Bay to Low Salchrie, the walking was not easy on a rock and gravel beach with lots of slippy seaweed around. We picked our way forward, scanning the ground for the small patches of sand that were easier to walk on. The views on the loch were nice, made nicer by a flotilla of swans moving sedately across the waters.
In all honesty, we were struggling at this point to put one foot in front of the other. It was not so much an arduous day's walking, rather an accumulation over a number of weeks. Dog weary, we stopped for a last time on a bench in Agnew Park for half an hour before coming up with the energy for the last mile. The sight of our car in the car park at Stranraer Harbour near brought tears to my eyes!