Portpatrick Dumfries and Galloway
Portpatrick is the most attractive village on the Galloway coast of southwest Scotland, a small harbour settlement above the Irish Sea at the western end of the Rhins of Galloway peninsula whose colourful painted buildings above the small harbour, the ruined castle and church on the headland above and the views across the North Channel to the Irish coast twenty-one miles away create one of the most characterful coastal settings in Scotland. The village was once the main embarkation point for Ireland, its position making the crossing to Donaghadee in Northern Ireland the shortest sea passage between Scotland and Ireland, before the harbour proved too exposed for reliable service and traffic shifted to Stranraer. The harbour at Portpatrick is a dramatic and atmospheric structure cut directly into the rock of the headland, the stone quays and the inner basin providing shelter for the small pleasure craft and fishing vessels that now use a harbour once busy with the Irish ferry traffic. The ruins of the seventeenth-century parish church immediately above the harbour, its roofless walls and the gravestones in the surrounding churchyard providing a romantic architectural feature, add an historical dimension to the harbour setting. The Southern Upland Way, one of Scotland's great long-distance walking routes, begins at Portpatrick and traverses the entire Southern Uplands to end at Cockburnspath on the Berwickshire coast, a journey of over 200 miles through the most rural and least visited parts of the Scottish Borders. The first section from Portpatrick along the Rhins coast provides excellent coastal walking with the Irish coast visible across the channel. The views from Portpatrick across the North Channel, particularly at sunset when the Irish coast is silhouetted against the western sky, are among the finest in Galloway.