bits of ground, onto a flat moorland. Cross this towards Bennan Hill to find a falling stone wall. Turn left down this, with a path. Keep downhill through a fence gate to Loup of Laggan pass.
Cross the path that passes through the pass and head up the lumpy moorland ridge opposite, keeping to the highest line. Pass Black Loch (small, among heather) and then White Lochan (larger, among grass). Now find a faint quad-bike track along the grassy ridgeline. There’s a slight dip, then a grassy rise to the summit ridge of Millfore. Turn left to the Millfore summit trig.
Return along the summit ridge, past Millfore’s southwest top. A quad-bike track runs down past the lochan called Fuffock on Drigmorn Hill.
Fuffock: one of the flat tassels in the dimples of an old mattress? A person who, at any stop, takes every single item out of their rucksack?
Continue briefly down southwest until the ridgeline steepens. Now turn left off the quad-bike trail to descend south, following the highest ground midway between Pulnee and Green Burns.
As the slope eases, with luck another quad-bike path will be found, which leads into fields. If it arrives at a fence gate, move left for 100 metres to a wall gateway near a little black shed. Pass through a second gateway, where a track runs ahead to an abandoned cottage, Drigmorn. On old Landranger maps this name, Drigmorn, is 500 metres too far north.
Behind the house the track fords Green Burn. Turn right on the forest road beyond. It runs downvalley past Auchenleck to the walk start.
WALK 5
Merrick and Murder Hole
| Start/Finish | Lower car park at Bruce’s Stone (NX 414 803) |
| Distance | 14.5km (9 miles) |
| Ascent | 700m (2700ft) |
| Approx time | 5½hrs |
| Terrain | Good path up Merrick, then grassy descent and small rough paths that can be peaty and wet |
| Max altitude | Merrick, 843m |
| Maps | Landranger 77 (Dalmellington); Explorer 318 (Galloway N); Harveys Galloway Hills |
| Parking | The lower Bruce’s Stone car park, with a ‘dual carriageway’ layout |
| Variants | Ascent via Fell of Eschoncan (no extra distance or mileage but a lot rougher); descent by Rig of the Buchan (described in Walk 6) – 13.5km (8½ miles) with 900m (3000ft) of ascent (about 5hrs) |
The granite country of Galloway is southern Scotland’s lakeland, with a score of lochs in an area just 30km across. This lochan-wander takes in four of the best – Trool, Valley, Neldricken and the highest and wildest water south of the Highlands, Loch Enoch. Almost as an afterthought Merrick is thrown in, the highest of the Southern Upland hills (but not the wildest – that’s Craignaw, on Walk 6).
And the Murder Hole? It’s a pool of unwholesome reeds and black water at the corner of Loch Neldricken. It’s bottomless and never freezes over, and it’s where the bog brigands of 200 years ago used to fling the unwanted carcasses of their victims. At least, if you believe The Raiders, by SR Crockett – a friend of Robert Louis Stevenson and almost his equal when it comes to a hill-walking adventure story to tingle your boot soles.
The alternative descent from Loch Enoch, by the Rig of the Buchan, is probably even nicer than the three lochs, while also being easier and drier underfoot. So if Merrick is to be your only route in Galloway, you may prefer to switch at Loch Enoch to this alternative descent.
Merrick from the east – Redstone Rig runs down the left-hand skyline
Diversion to Fell of Eschoncan
Near the top end of the car park a small bracken path heads up the steep side of Fell of Eschoncan – it was created with a strimmer for the first running of the Merrick hill race, but persists as a rugged alternative route over Fell of Eschoncan. The faint path then passes across the rough plateau of Bennan, staying below, and east of, the radio masts to continue north across a sometimes soggy wide col to join the main path up Benyellary.
Continue up the road beyond the lower car park for 10 metres, then take a small informal path through woods on its right. After 150 metres this arrives at Bruce’s Stone, perched high above Loch Trool.
Bruce’s Stone is a granite erratic – a smaller but similar granite lump is nearby alongside the arrival path. The bedrock below the monument is greywacke sandstone, darker than the granite, here with the knobbly ‘hornfelsed’ texture – it has been cooked by the heat of the granite intrusion, whose edge is only a few hundred metres away. So the glacier has not had to bring the Bruce’s boulder very far. However, some Galloway granite is found hundreds of miles away to the south and southeast.
Turn left at the Bruce’s Stone on a wide, well-made path past two benches to the upper car park at the end of the road.
At the top end of this upper car park a wide path sets off uphill (northeast), with a large signboard announcing it as the Merrick Trail. The path is rugged, with peat and boulders – it gets much better higher up. In 200 metres it arrives above the wooded slot of the Buchan Burn, with waterfalls heard below.
After running for 400 metres above the stream, the path turns uphill a little and contours through mature plantation. It is now wide and smooth and will remain so for the rest of the ascent. At Culsharg bothy the path turns uphill to a forest road. The bothy has recently been restored with glass windows and midgeproof door. Turn right for 50 metres, crossing a stream, to find the path continuing uphill to the right of the stream. It emerges over a carved stone marking the top of woodland to pass through a gate on open hillside and then reach the wall up the southwest flank of Benyellary. The path runs up to the right of the wall to the large cairn on Benyellary.
Here the wall and path bend left, descending around the rim of the Gloon corrie onto the well-defined ridgeline of Neive of the Spit. The path to the right of the wall follows the very brink of the corrie; the one up to the left offers additional views westwards towards the sea and Ailsa Craig. At the end of this connecting ridge the wall and path bend slightly left (north) up the summit slope of Merrick. After 200 metres the path bends right, away from the wall, to rake up the hill flank to the white-painted trig point on Merrick.
GRANITE AND GREYWACKE
Just above the granite junction on Redstone Rig
The granite of the Galloway Highlands melted its way up into the standard Southern Upland rock, which is the chunky deep-ocean sandstone called greywacke. Around the edges of the granite the country rock is cooked and crumbled, so all around Mullwarchar and Craignaw lie valleys such as the Silver Flowe. But a mile or two further out, the surrounding greywacke was baked and hardened, and this tougher rock rises in the hill ridges of Merrick and the Kells and Minnigaffs. The result is a ‘metamorphic areole’, also known as 50 miles of fine hill-walking in a ring around the granite heartland.
The difference between the Merrick’s
