Why we love Thornhill

One of the places that we use for a number of our tours is the village of Thornhill. It means that our guests can choose to stay at Nithbank Estate, Scotland’s B&B of the year. But it is its  location in the valley of the River Nith with some of southern Scotland’s high moor and mountain to the north east that makes it appealing.

Rides to the highest village in Scotland and a dram in the highest pub are possible, but so are more gentle rides in the quiet lanes. Whichever direction you go, there will be a castle and beautiful landscape.

A new route for this year - Whisky & Burns with  Annandale Distillery along the coast and turning inland at Dumfries to here. Our most popular holiday is a two centre one that we call Castles & Coast  that links Thornhill and the artists town of Kirkcudbright.

Thornhill has the wow factor of Drumlanrig Castle, the Pink Palace home in the south west to the Duke of Buccleuch. But it is one of the areas less well known sons, a humble blacksmith that we have been focusing some attention over the winter months. 

One of the absolute joys of setting up our guests on bikes for their first few miles with us is following them on the ride to the grave of Kirkpatrick Macmillan the inventor of the modern bicycle. Down a poorly signed track to a graveyard and through long grass to the grave and there almost as an afterthought is Kirkpatrick's claim to fame ‘ inventor of the bicycle ‘.

A friend wrote a wonderful book about the invention of the bicycle and how the idea was stolen. Like all good books it blurs the line between the area around Thornhill and fiction; ‘Jamsie Burns and the bicycle thieves’. We were lucky enough to receive a literary grant from Spot-lit to create a cycle route. It is all part of our plan to get a portrait of Kirkpatrick onto our bank notes here in Scotland!

If you see any mistakes, let us know - we have not gone to print yet. Thanks.