More for your cycle touring holidays. As Galloway remains empty [though getting there bit busier than it was].
Davie established Ayr Road Cycling Club in the 1930s with amongst others the future BMW mogul Harry Fairbairn when Harry was a bike mechanic out of a hut at Prestwick Toll.
Davie wrote his weekly Highwayman column for the Ayrshire Post from 1935 to 1965. When he died aged 57.
He was born in Dumfries but lived in Ayr most of his days and his routes would tend to be south to the Galloway Hills. Famously leading a group of. 8 up the Merrick [the highest hill in Southern Scotland] with an inflatable boat to paddle on the loch. Early bike a hike. [@Algo emulated this when we bike hiked the highest hill in South Lanarkshire Coulter Fell, but by this time a paddle board fitted in one pannier]
Rowantree Toll on the NCN Route 7 parallel to the road from Straiton to Newton Stewart has a brass monument [of the ring of hills that the Merrick is daddy of] bit like the plinth at the Mound of Old Town. In 2023 a bench was installed with Fairbairn’s widow and public donation but it was nicked quite quickly.
Glentrool and Bargrennan are down from Rowantree. Hopefully the hotel will re-open for the spring. [I stayed there many decades ago and they thought i was a girl as my hair was long].
The columns were turned into books after Davie died. The Highwayman and The Highwayman 2 or similar.
You get a flavor if you find The Grey Man of The Merrick blog by an ever so slightly more modern writer called Moonwatcher. On tachras.co.uk [slightly odd Wordpress early BBC Acorn feel there] He emulated Davie I think in the early 1980s. Starting in Wanlockhead [he doesn’t specify where he set off from but is Glaswegian]. He then descends The Mennock Pass with two panniers laden worrying about his brakes and heads to Ayr to buy a pipe to beat the midges [the tobacconists still there]. Then on to Croy shore at Culzean where his family have a caravan.next day From sea level he then climbs up to Straiton over to Rowantree then up the Merrick at Glentrool emulating Davie. Over 5-7 days i reckon. Much back story on Covenanters, SR Crockett misidentifying Murder Hole, fish and chips in a basket, pints of beer. No chat in either Davie or Moonwatcher of Motor Cars. Davie was in favour of leading groups, Moonwatcher strictly solo. Littlewoods Pools get a mention as Glentrool was where they had their staff holiday home.
Cycling in the Southern Uplands remains quiet and with the forestry commission taking trees out the landscape is returning to what was described in the sources I am quoting frm.
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