Stranraer

As a former ferry town, Stranraer has a decent spread of hotels and guesthouses in and around the centre, mostly modest and reasonably priced rather than luxurious, with a few overlooking Loch Ryan itself. If you'd prefer a more scenic base, Portpatrick, around 20 minutes away, has a good choice of harbourside hotels and inns with sea views and easy access to the coastal path, while Castle Kennedy and the wider Rhins peninsula offer a scattering of country house hotels and farm-based B&Bs set among the gardens and farmland. Self-catering cottages are plentiful across the area, from traditional stone cottages to more contemporary conversions, and many owners are used to guests basing themselves here for walking, birdwatching or simply touring the coast road. Booking ahead is sensible in summer, when the Rhins draws walkers tackling the Southern Upland Way and visitors timing their trip around the gardens' flowering seasons, but outside peak months availability is generally good and prices drop noticeably. Given the modest size of the town itself, most visitors treat Stranraer as a comfortable, well-connected base rather than a destination to spend all their time in, using it as the hub for day trips out to Portpatrick, the Mull of Galloway and Luce Bay.

Stranraer makes a practical base for exploring the Rhins of Galloway, with a mix of gardens, history and coastal walks close by.

• Castle Kennedy Gardens — Sprawling 75-acre gardens laid out on an isthmus between two lochs, with a ruined 17th-century castle, rhododendron walks, a walled garden and specimen trees planted using ballast from the Earl of Stair's ships.
• Castle of St John — A 16th-century tower house in the middle of town that has served as a residence, a garrison and a prison; it now houses a small museum on its history.
• Agnew Park — A family-friendly green space on the waterfront with a boating pond, miniature railway on selected days, play area and views out over Loch Ryan.
• Portpatrick — A picture-postcard fishing village around 20 minutes' drive away, with a working harbour, pastel-painted houses, cliff-top walks along the Southern Upland Way and several seafood pubs.
• Mull of Galloway — Scotland's most southerly point, reached via a scenic drive through the Rhins; a working lighthouse (open seasonally to climb), RSPB reserve and cliffs with views to Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Lake District on a clear day.
• Luce Bay and Sands — One of Scotland's largest stretches of sandy beach, curving for miles around Luce Bay with dunes backing the shore, popular for a long walk or a bracing swim.
• Logan Botanic Garden — Part of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, this walled garden near Port Logan grows tree ferns, cabbage palms and other southern-hemisphere plants that thrive in the mild Gulf Stream climate.

Stranraer's own dining scene is modest, with a handful of cafés and pubs around the town centre and harbourfront serving straightforward Scottish fare, but it's worth the short drive to Portpatrick for the town's better-known seafood restaurants and harbourside pubs, several of which make the most of the day's catch. Local producers around the Rhins and Machars supply the wider area with cheese, seafood and beef, and farm shops and small bakeries are dotted along the A75 and A77 for picnic supplies if you're heading out to the beaches or the Mull of Galloway.

Camping around Stranraer means committing to Scotland's south-western weather: mild but changeable, with rain arriving off the Irish Sea at short notice throughout the year, softened somewhat by the same Gulf Stream influence that lets subtropical plants thrive at Logan Botanic Garden nearby. The terrain is gentler than the Highlands, a mix of rolling farmland, sea loch shoreline and low cliffs, which makes for accessible walking and cycling but offers less shelter from coastal wind than a wooded glen would. As with the rest of Scotland, wild camping is generally legal here under the Scottish Outdoor Access Code, provided campers follow the code's principles of camping in small numbers, staying away from buildings and roads, keeping pitches away for no more than a couple of nights, and leaving no trace, a freedom that doesn't extend south of the border into England and Wales. That said, the coastline around the Mull of Galloway and Luce Bay includes nature reserves and farmland where landowners' wishes should be respected, and formal campsites around Stranraer, Loch Ryan and Portpatrick are a straightforward and often more sheltered alternative. Midges are a real but generally lesser nuisance here than in the Highlands, thanks to the coastal breeze, though they can still bite around dawn and dusk on stiller days inland, particularly near woodland or slow-moving water. Late spring through early autumn is the most comfortable camping season, with April to June often bringing the gardens at Castle Kennedy and Logan into bloom alongside the driest spells. For those who'd rather skip a tent altogether, glamping pods and static caravans have sprung up around Loch Ryan and the wider Rhins, offering sea views and a warm bed while still being close to the beaches and coastal paths that draw most visitors here.