About Us

After a 30 years career working in various locations throughout Dumfries and Galloway region, Robin Hogg from Castle Douglas started arranging cycling holidays 4 years ago. 

Always interested in local history, beautiful scenery and places of interest,Robin's second career brought together these interests with organisational skills and knowledge of the area to produce the successful cycling business. Here are some previous customers comments. 

This new business, Galloway Walking Holidays, again only covering the area familar to us, i.e. Dumfries and Galloway region, is a natural progression with similar skills and knowledge required. 

Robin is aware of the dangers of walking in the Galloway Hills and higher mountainous area of the region, having been involved with various searches and rescue operations in the past. All our leisure walks are therefore selected with the minimum level of risk. Those in higher ground or more difficult are in our Guided category and assessed by Sandy - see below - who is qualified leader and has experience of the areas concerned.

This leisure walking holidays concept has been presented to Scottish Enterprise and resulted in a Tourism Innovation Development Award. As with the cycling holidays, attention to detail and flexibility to adapt to suit customer requirements are important ingredients to ensure all goes well. It is hoped that similar positive endorsements to those mentioned on the cycling website www.gallowaycycling.co.uk  will be forthcoming as the business develops.

We are committed to Green Tourism i.e. employ good environmental practices in all our business activities to minimise our impact on the environment. We are pleased to say we have  been inspected and were accredited with the Green Tourism Business Scheme Silver award. We should point out that the tours themselves incorporating accommodation providers and other activities are not accredited by GTBS as such an accreditation system is not yet in place.

PERSONNEL

Robin has several part-time assistants who have numerous attributes and skills including local knowledge.

Steven Gordon, has a degree in Multi Media studies and has excellent product development and technical skills. Steven has assisted with the development of this website and will continue to be employed in our office and also outdoors as required.

Eck Wilson is a local walking and photography enthusiast who has accompanied Robin on most of the walks researched. He has been invaluable to make observations and maintain a photographic record of the walks. Eck, a nick-name for Eric, has also tested out local bus routes on return from the end of linear walks - there is a amusing story here which we can tell you when you arrive!

Dick Henry has also lived and worked in the region throughout his life and with similar local knowledge skills to Robin. Dick is available on a part-time basis, along with his other flexible commitments, to assist with the walking holidays operation in addition to the cycling holidays.

We have several other temporary part-time assistants in the extremities throughout the region who have local knowledge and assist with luggage transfer and other organisational aspects.

Guided Tours

We are fortunate to have collaborated with Sandy White of Galloway Mountain Guides, also based in Castle Douglas to offer some Guided Walks including Map and Compass Workshops and Hill Navigation practical sessions for occasional/ leisure walkers.

Sandy has walked extensively throughout Scotland, England and Wales over the last 20 years and is passionate about Galloway and Moffat Hills. These wild hills and remote lochs have some of the most unusual names ands shapes you will ever see – so come and discover them with your local guide. Sandy is a qualified mountain leader.By collaborating with Sandy, we currently offer a limited number of guided walks inour region.

We are indebted to several others with extensive countryside and local  knowledge who are friends and would not wish to be named, - including local Access officers, Countryside Rangers and National Trust for Scotland managers.

OUR BASE

We are based in the thriving market town of Castle Douglas (pop.3600) which is themed as a food town www.cd-foodtown.org due to its large number of independent food related busineses. Carlingwark loch is at the edge of the town and Threave Estate with the Castle and separate Garden is well known feature of the region.

The coast (Solway Firth) is only seven miles away to the south and the Galloway Hills, including the Galloway Forest Park is a similar distance to the north.

Castle Douglas is easy to reach by car, being by-passed by the A75 roadway, the main route between Carlisle in England (1 hour away) and Stranraer, gateway to N. Ireland. Glasgow and Edinburgh are both 2 hours away. Glasgow Prestwick airport (Ryanair) is the nearest airport (1 hour) with Dumfries and Lockerbie railway stations being 1/2 an hour and 3/4 hour away from Castle Douglas. It is 1 hour from Edinburgh to Lockerbie and Glasgow to Dumfries by train.

Most of our tours begin from our base in Castle Douglas.

We normally arrange to meet our customers once they have settled into their arranged accommodation. A welcome tour meeting takes place (unless you just wish the information left for you) when the walking tour pack including map(s), itinerary and tourist leaflets are provided.