Kirkcudbright

Hotels in Kirkcudbright tend to be small and characterful rather than large-scale, reflecting the size of the town itself. The Selkirk Arms on the High Street is the best-known option, an eighteenth-century coaching inn turned townhouse hotel with a restaurant and bistro, well placed for the harbour, castle and galleries. Beyond this, the town and its surrounding villages offer a mix of guesthouses, B&Bs and small independent hotels, many run by local families and offering a more personal alternative to chain accommodation. Prices are generally lower than in Scotland's better-known tourist honeypots, though rooms can book up well ahead during the summer Art & Craft Trail and sailing regatta season.

For those happy to stay a short drive from the centre, nearby villages such as Gatehouse of Fleet, Castle Douglas and the smaller harbour settlements along the Solway coast add further hotel and guesthouse choice, often with sea or estuary views and easy access to the wider Galloway countryside. Whichever option is chosen, Kirkcudbright's compact layout means most hotels are within easy walking distance of the harbour, MacLellan's Castle and the town's galleries, making a car unnecessary once you have arrived.

Kirkcudbright rewards slow exploration, with most of its best sights within a short walk of the harbour and High Street.

• MacLellan's Castle — a striking sixteenth-century tower house built in 1582 by Sir Thomas MacLellan, standing ruined but substantially intact right in the centre of town and cared for by Historic Environment Scotland.
• Broughton House and Garden — the eighteenth-century townhouse and studio of Glasgow Boy artist E.A. Hornel, now in the care of the National Trust for Scotland, with his paintings, library and a Japanese-influenced garden running down to the Dee.
• Kirkcudbright Galleries — housed in the town's handsomely restored former town hall, displaying works by the Glasgow Boys and Scottish Colourists alongside changing exhibitions of contemporary art.
• The harbour — a genuine working fishing harbour on the Dee, where scallop and shellfish boats land their catch and the quaysides make for an easy evening stroll.
• The Tolbooth Art Centre — a seventeenth-century former tolbooth and jail on the High Street, now a small gallery and heritage space tracing the town's artists' colony.
• Dee estuary and coastal path — walking routes follow the widening river out towards the Solway Firth, popular with birdwatchers for the wading birds that gather on the mudflats.
• Kirkcudbright Wildlife Park — just outside town, home to red pandas, lemurs and native Scottish species set in wooded parkland.

The Selkirk Arms on the High Street is the town's best-known dining spot, an eighteenth-century coaching inn where Robert Burns is said to have written the Selkirk Grace in 1794, now serving restaurant and bistro menus built around local produce alongside a well-kept range of real ales and malt whiskies. Harbourside cafes and bakeries around the quay make the most of the daily catch and are well suited to a lunch between galleries, while a handful of independent bistros and tearooms around the High Street offer a more relaxed pace than the bigger towns along the coast.

Kirkcudbright and the surrounding Galloway coast are well suited to camping, from small independent sites tucked into farmland to larger caravan and camping parks looking out over the Dee estuary or Solway Firth. In Scotland, wild camping in unenclosed countryside is generally permitted under the Scottish Outdoor Access Code, which allows lightweight, low-impact camping on most unenclosed land away from buildings and roads, subject to leaving no trace and respecting local byelaws; some stretches of the Galloway coast and Loch Ken further north have seasonal restrictions in the busiest summer months, so it is worth checking current local signage before pitching up outside a formal site.

The coastline and hills around Kirkcudbright give campers a genuine variety of terrain: sheltered estuary-side pitches with views across the mudflats to wading birds, small rocky coves further along the Solway shore, and inland sites in the wooded glens and farmland that roll back from the coast towards Galloway Forest Park. The Galloway Forest Park itself, a Dark Sky Park recognised for some of the darkest skies in the UK, lies within easy reach and adds stargazing to the list of reasons to pitch a tent locally.

The best camping season runs from late spring to early autumn, when daylight hours are longest and the coastal weather is at its calmest, though the region rarely gets uncomfortably hot and midges are less of a nuisance here than in the Highlands. For those who prefer a roof over a tent, glamping has taken hold across Dumfries and Galloway in recent years, with pods, shepherd's huts and yurts appearing on farms and smallholdings around Kirkcudbright, offering the same estuary and countryside views with rather more comfort. Campsites around the town range from simple, quiet farm sites to larger parks with full facilities, giving a genuine choice for both back-to-basics campers and those wanting a more equipped base for exploring the Artists' Town.