Caravan club sites in Dumfries and Galloway

Dumfries and Galloway is the part of Scotland most caravanners drive past. It holds the Galloway Forest Park dark sky reserve, a soft Solway coastline warmed by the Gulf Stream, and prices well below the Highlands. It is also the natural first or last night of any tour of Scotland.

Where the sites are

Moffat sits at the top of the county just off the A74(M) and is one of the more dependable all-year sites in Scotland, which makes it a standard staging post in both directions. The Solway coast holds the biggest cluster, with sites around Dumfries, Dalbeattie, Sandyhills, Kirkcudbright and Gatehouse of Fleet. A third group sits west near Newton Stewart, Glenluce and the Rhins, handy for the Cairnryan ferries.

Getting there

The A74(M) and M6 make the eastern half easy. The A75 runs west from Gretna to Stranraer and is the road you will spend real time on — single carriageway for most of its length, carrying a heavy volume of Irish freight to and from Cairnryan, with only intermittent overtaking sections. It presents no towing difficulty. It is simply slow, and following an articulated lorry for twenty miles is normal.

The A76 north through Sanquhar and the A701 over the Devil's Beef Tub from Moffat are quieter alternatives, the latter steep but perfectly manageable.

Local notes

If you are catching a ferry to Northern Ireland, Cairnryan is around two hours from Dumfries on the A75 with no realistic shortcut. Build in a margin, because the road has no capacity to absorb a hold-up.

The Galloway Forest Park roads are worth exploring, but the Raiders Road forest drive is unsurfaced gravel with a toll and no place for a caravan. The A712 Queen's Way between New Galloway and Newton Stewart is the sensible scenic route.

The season runs late March to October for most sites, with Moffat and one or two others open through the winter.