A trip along the literary trail

The roads get narrower and narrower as we drive through southwestern Scotland. We left behind the divided highway outside Glasgow, and then, somewhere near the towns with signs saying “Haste Ye Back,” lose the painted line down the middle of the two-lane road.

For a few kilometres now, we’ve been on a one-track road, the kind where you must back up to the last lay-by if you meet a car coming from the other direction. My mother politely suggests that it might be a good idea to turn around.

Caught in the act of what is, at minimum, a six-point turn for a still jet-lagged driver getting reacquainted with driving from the passenger seat, I ask a man sent by the gods of lost travellers if we were on the road to Newton Stewart.

We’re not but he quickly straightens us out, and we’re soon on the road to somewhere again. Specifically, the area around Wigtown, the village that has become Scotland’s national book town.

I had lived in Scotland when I was young and had been back several times since, but on this trip, I want to try a new area “Galloway” and a new theme “literary Scotland”.

For someone seriously bookish, the idea of a town dedicated to second-hand books was thrilling.

And Wigtown doesn’t disappoint.

The Book Shop proved to be my favourite spot with its row upon row of Penguins, higgledy-piggledy rooms, chandeliers and fireplaces.

But even the most bookish types have to go outside once in a while, and we opted for the  Machars peninsula, which offers rolling green fields and woodlands carpeted with wildflowers. The coastline manages to look rugged and lush at the same time while seaside villages boast rows of pastel-painted houses.

We book in to one of the more perfect places I’ve rented in my travels, with one of the better names: Cruggleton Lodge, about a 10-minute drive south of Wigtown. Sitting on the edge of a cliff, with a view of the Irish Sea and the remnants of a 12th century castle, it was in spooky disrepair when owners Ella and Finn McCreath rescued it.

Today, the interior is just as striking as the view, both modern-stylish and cosy, a hard combination to get right. The wooden floors have an inherent warmth to them, so going barefoot is sensuous. Oh, and for those who daydream of living the retro-Anglo country life, it even has an Aga stove.

We spend the evenings sampling a 22-year-old single malt from Scotland’s southernmost whisky-maker from Bladnoch Distillery and lunch at the Bladnoch Inn, a whitewashed pub and bed-and-breakfast.

Further down the peninsula, the Steam Packet Inn in the village of Isle of Whithorn proves a lovely place to have Sunday lunch.

After a few days of exploring the region, with its beach cave where a saint once meditated and its ancient standing stones, it’s time for our next literary destination: Edinburgh.

Perhaps the most famous book set in Edinburgh is Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” inspired by an upstanding citizen who secretly lived a lowdown life.

My favourite Edinburgh book is Muriel Spark’s “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” and my mothers is crazy about anything from Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus series.

The closest we get to the latter is the Oxford Bar, famous for being a Rankin favourite. Even though the pub, on a quiet street in the New Town, is on the tourist trail, the bartender and the locals couldn’t be friendlier.

The closest we get to the former is a 10-minute walk to the Old Town, and an inscription in the concrete outside the Writers’ Museum that reads, “The transfiguration of the commonplace. Muriel Spark”.

The museum, in a pretty little close off the Royal Mile not far from Edinburgh Castle, honours three of Scotland’s most famous writers: Stevenson, Walter Scott and Robert Burns. 

One night in Edinburgh, my oldest friend come to visit and he immediately fell in love with the stupendous views from the place we are renting. 

The Old Observatory House, recently restored by a building preservation group called the Vivat Trust, sits atop Calton Hill, which has probably the best vantage point in the city. The views are 360 degrees: of the castle, the extinct volcano known as Arthur’s Seat, the Firth of Forth and the truly odd assortment of memorials and buildings on the hill itself, including a half-built acropolis.

The Gothic-style house looked like a mini-castle and has a touch of Downton Abbey to it – right down to the service bells above the kitchen door. It doesn’t come cheap, at about $300 (Bt9,300) a night, but it sleeps eight, and it would be a dreamy place for a gathering of family or friends.