Inside the remote Scottish peninsula where Churchill and Eisenhower planned D-Day
On a map, the Rhins of Galloway looks like the head of a pickaxe: a 45 kilometer long and five kilometer wide peninsula connected by a narrow tongue of land to Dumfries and Galloway in south-west Scotland.
And once you cross, you will feel as if you have entered a secret world.
It was this seclusion that attracted two famous former visitors to a Victorian hunting lodge on a hidden bay surrounded by grassy headlands during the Second World War.
Knockinaam Lodge, now a luxury hotel with ten rooms and a huge lawn leading to a pebble beach, hosted an important meeting between Winston Churchill and General Dwight Eisenhower in May 1944. The pair spent two days planning D-Day in this peaceful, tucked-away spot.
Today you can clamber along a path to a cliff path that rollercoasters over rugged cliffs dotted with purple heather, before descending through the gullies to the undulating sea caves.
Martin Symington explores the Rhins of Galloway in south-west Scotland. Pictured here are the ruins of Dunskey Castle
Isolated: Knockinaam Lodge (pictured) is where Winston Churchill and General Dwight Eisenhower spent two days planning D-Day in May 1944, Martin reveals
The Mull of Galloway is home to protected colonies of Kittiwakes, as you can see here, Martin reveals
After about an hour you’ll reach the haunting ruins of the 12th-century Dunskey Castle, dramatically perched on a windswept rock.
From these ruins a path winds to Portpatrick. Spread around a shell-shaped harbour, the town is a charming place and the cafes on the quayside sell top-notch fresh crab sandwiches.
Single-track roads cross the peninsula. If we meander further, after a while we arrive at an avenue with palm trees. This leads to the Logan Botanic Garden – created on the Rhins due to a rare microclimate created by the warming waters of the Gulf Stream. I wander through eucalyptus forests and clearings with flamboyant exotic plants reminiscent of New Zealand, Chile and Vietnam.
Martin visits the small harbor town of Portpatrick (above). It’s a “charming place,” he says
Above is a lighthouse on the Mull of Galloway, the southernmost point of Scotland
As we leave this incongruous world behind us, another winding road leads up the narrowing peninsula to the Mull of Galloway, Scotland’s southernmost point.
The promontory here is an RSPB nature reserve, with protected colonies of guillemots and kittiwakes whose nests are in the cliffs.
A white lighthouse accentuates the furthest point. You pay to climb 115 steps to the top, from where an astonishing 360-degree panorama unfolds. You feel far removed from anywhere else here, perfect for a clandestine meeting, as Churchill and Eisenhower discovered.
