Loch Trool Galloway
Loch Trool in the Galloway Forest Park is the most scenically dramatic of the lochs in the Galloway Hills, a narrow elongated loch of considerable beauty set beneath the highest hills in the Southern Uplands in a landscape of great wildness that provides the finest walking destination in southwest Scotland. The combination of the loch scenery, the Bruce's Stone commemorating Robert the Bruce's victory over the English in the glen above in 1307 and the walking available on the surrounding Merrick massif creates one of the most rewarding natural heritage destinations in Dumfries and Galloway.
The Bruce's Stone above the east end of the loch commemorates one of the most significant early encounters in Robert the Bruce's campaign to recover the Scottish throne, when the battle of Glen Trool in 1307 represented one of the first military successes in a campaign that would eventually lead to the decisive victory at Bannockburn in 1314. The stone provides a direct connection to the landscape of the Scottish Wars of Independence in one of the finest and most remote natural settings in the Galloway Hills.
The walk from Loch Trool to the summit of the Merrick, at 843 metres the highest hill in the Southern Uplands, provides one of the finest upland walking days in southwest Scotland, the route ascending through the Galloway Hills in a landscape of considerable wild quality that is entirely different in character from the Highland walking it superficially resembles.