Langholm

Langholm’s hotels and inns cluster around the High Street and the old bridges over the Esk, many of them long-established coaching houses that have been putting up travellers on the Carlisle to Edinburgh road for well over a century. The Douglas Hotel and the Crown Hotel both combine simple, comfortable rooms with busy bars and restaurants downstairs, so you’re never far from a meal or a pint after a day on the hills, while the Eskdale Hotel offers a similar mix of accommodation and home cooking in the heart of the town.

Beyond the town centre, the surrounding glens of Eskdale, Ewesdale and Wauchopedale hold a scatter of farmhouse bed and breakfasts and self-catering cottages, many run by families who have farmed this land for generations and can point guests towards the best hill walks, fishing beats on the Esk, or quiet backroads for cycling. Langholm’s position directly on the A7 also makes it a genuinely useful overnight stop for longer journeys between England and central Scotland, rather than purely a destination in itself.

Whatever you choose, Langholm’s hotels put you within easy striking distance of Whita Hill, the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve, and the wider network of Borders walking and cycling trails, as well as the town’s own handsome sandstone streets and riverside paths.

Langholm rewards anyone willing to climb out of the valley, but there is plenty in the town itself too.

• Whita Hill and the Malcolm Monument — A stiff walk up from the town leads to the 100ft obelisk raised in 1835 to Sir John Malcolm, soldier, diplomat and Governor of Bombay, one of three famous Malcolm brothers born locally. The monument stands on the summit of Whita Hill and is visible for miles across Eskdale.
• Hugh MacDiarmid Memorial — On the same hillside, close to the car park at the start of the Malcolm Monument track, stands a striking cast-iron memorial in the shape of an open book, sculpted by Jake Harvey and unveiled in 1985. It honours Christopher Murray Grieve, born in Langholm in 1892, who wrote as Hugh MacDiarmid and became the driving force of the 20th-century Scottish literary renaissance.
• The Common Riding — Held on the last Friday in July, Langholm’s Common Riding dates back to 1759 and is one of the great surviving Borders festivals. The day starts at 5am with a flute and drum band parading the streets, followed by mounted riders galloping out to check the boundaries of the burgh’s common land, then an afternoon of horse racing and games in front of the whole town.
• Tarras Valley Nature Reserve — Following two community buyouts in 2020 and 2022, the people of Langholm now own around 10,500 acres of the former Langholm Moor, one of the largest community land purchases in Scottish history. The reserve protects blanket peat bog, upland moor and river meadows, and is being restored for nature and climate as well as public access.
• Gilnockie Tower — A short drive south of the town, this restored 16th-century tower house was once home to Johnnie Armstrong, the most notorious of the Border Reivers, hanged on the orders of James V in 1530. It gives a vivid sense of the lawless border society Langholm grew out of.
• The Border Fine Arts Gallery — Langholm is the home of Border Fine Arts, the collectible figurine maker, and its gallery and shop trace the craft’s history alongside changing exhibitions.
• Riverside walks along the Esk — Well-maintained paths follow the River Esk and Ewes Water through the town, taking in old stone bridges and mill buildings, and connecting onward to more than a hundred miles of waymarked hill trails around the town.

The Douglas Hotel, a restored coaching inn on the High Street, and the Crown Hotel both serve pub favourites alongside their bar trade, while the Eskdale Hotel offers an all-day menu of home-cooked traditional dishes. The Buck Hotel has been a fixture of the town for more than 150 years, a proper local for a pint and a game of pool. For something lighter, Johnnie Armstrong of Gilnockie Coffee Bar and First Bite Coffee Shop on the Market Place both do a busy breakfast and lunch trade, and Pelosi’s, making ice cream in the town since 1913, still sends its vans out around Eskdale and beyond in summer.

Langholm and the hills that surround it are prime territory for wild camping under Scotland’s Outdoor Access Code, which gives a general right of responsible access to most open land and water across the country, including much of the moorland and hill ground around the town. The rolling summits of Whita Hill, Warblaw Hill and the wider Tarras Valley offer classic Southern Uplands camping: rounded, grassy tops, sheltered glens and long views over Eskdale, without the crowds or the midge-plagued lochsides further north and west. As with anywhere in Scotland, campers are expected to keep well away from houses, leave no trace, and take extra care with fires given how much of this ground is peat and heather moorland, some of it now part of the actively-restored Tarras Valley Nature Reserve.

The terrain here is proper Borders hill country rather than Highland mountain — steep-sided valleys, fast-flowing burns and open heather moor rather than rock and scree — which makes for excellent, accessible backpacking without requiring serious mountaineering experience. The Ewes Water and Wauchope Water valleys both offer good walking-in routes to quieter pitches, and the community-owned Tarras Valley land is being managed partly with public access and low-impact recreation in mind, though visitors should check current guidance for any sensitive restoration areas such as newly planted woodland or peat bog repair sites.

Late spring through to early autumn is the best window, when the ground is driest underfoot and the days are long enough for a proper hill walk before pitching. As with the rest of Scotland, midges can be a real nuisance on still, damp evenings from June to August, particularly near the burns and in sheltered glens, so a headnet and repellent are worth packing. Those who prefer a fixed structure rather than a tent will find a small but growing number of glamping pods and rural campsites in the wider Eskdale area, offering a comfortable base within easy reach of the Common Riding, the Malcolm Monument and the Tarras Valley trails.