We started this last week, 24th March.
We booked into the Downshire Arms in Portpatrick for the 23rd and 24th
as we didn't think we'd fancy a long drive home the night after doing
part 1 of the walk. The 24th was a gorgeous day, bit of a chill in the
air but nice and sunny, so after our excellent breakfast we headed
off.
We had packed for arctic conditions with big jackets, gloves etc, but
by the first half mile I was down to a t-shirt with the missus down to
the same after about a mile or so.
The first 5 miles of the Way is excellent, up and down the coastal
hills with the clear weather giving excellent views. And we meandered
along at a pretty much sedate rate, around 2mph, this was down to
stopping to take pics etc.
Once past Killantringan Lighthouse the scenery deteriorated into miles
and miles of farmed fields and before long we were walking through
sheep [censored] towards Knockquhassen Reservoir. Neither of us fancied
having lunch near so much sheep dung so we continued on until we hit
the Old Military Road before having coffee and sandwiches.
We had already decided that for the first leg we would walk as far as
Stranraer rather than Castle Kennedy and return in a week or two with
friends and do the remaining 4 miles of so to Castle Kennedy as a
short training walk, so after passing the turning point for the SUW to
head inland we plodded down into Stranraer and a bus back to the hotel
for a well deserved pint and the last 20 minutes of Scotland v
Georgia.
According to the GPS we walked for 9 miles, and took just over 5
hours, most of that slowness was on the first half of the way and I
think a few more training walks and maybe some cycling/running will
help with that.
I have saved the GPS data as both an MMO and a GPX file and can post
it up somewhere if anyone thinks it may be of interest. I've also
loaded it into RoboGEO to play around with geomapping the pictures we
took.
The remainder of Part 1 could get done next weekend weather and
friends dependent, then we'll start looking at the Castle Kennedy ->
New Luce section.