Sheep-spotted hills, real stone walls, roadside castle ruins…we truly are in Britain.

This weekend we took our first road trip since living in the UK. A friend of mine from Vancouver, Pamela, is currently living in Glasgow doing a masters degree in art history. Since she owns a car and enjoys traveling, the three of us planned a trip to explore a bit of Scotland.

First think Saturday morning we hopped in the car and headed to Souther Scotland in search of a small town called Kirkcudbright (/kɚˈkuːbriː/, or “Kirr Coo Bree”). As we drove on we were in awe of the beautiful Scottish countryside and the roaming livestock. We even had some sunshine poke through which truly lit everything up. It was an amazing drive.

Kirkcudbright was a teeny coastal town, a bit smaller than we thought. When we got there we had lunch and then wandered the streets and the shore. The castle ruins, multi-colored home fronts and boat lined shores shining in the sun were just some of the sites we saw.

Saturday night we drove into Dumfries and had a nice leisurely dinner at a great pub. The Scotland v All Blacks rugby match was on so the pub was packed out. Derek was glad to have some sports on in the background and all in all we had a great evening.

After a great night of sleep we had a disgusting breakfast at Little Chef (think Denny’s but WAY worse) and then hit the road again. Destination = Wigtown. Wigtown is Scotland’s National Book Town. Derek and Pamela were quite excited about this fact.  Unfortunately most of these bookstores are not open on Sundays so we were quite unsuccessful. Although Derek did find one book at the lone used bookstore that was open. We hit the road again and decided to head back to Glasgow to have a late lunch at Wagamama and then for Derek and I to catch a bus back to Edinburgh.

Click below to see the pics:

Road trip to Southwest Scotland