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WALK 5

Merrick and Murder Hole

Start/Finish	Lower car park at Bruce’s Stone (NX 414 803)
Distance	14.5km (9 miles)
Ascent	700m (2700ft)
Approx time	5½hrs
Terrain	Good path up Merrick, then grassy descent and small rough paths that can be peaty and wet
Max altitude	Merrick, 843m
Maps	Landranger 77 (Dalmellington); Explorer 318 (Galloway N); Harveys Galloway Hills
Parking	The lower Bruce’s Stone car park, with a ‘dual carriageway’ layout
Variants	Ascent via Fell of Eschoncan (no extra distance or mileage but a lot rougher); descent by Rig of the Buchan (described in Walk 6) – 13.5km (8½ miles) with 900m (3000ft) of ascent (about 5hrs)

The granite country of Galloway is southern Scotland’s lakeland, with a score of lochs in an area just 30km across. This lochan-wander takes in four of the best – Trool, Valley, Neldricken and the highest and wildest water south of the Highlands, Loch Enoch. Almost as an afterthought Merrick is thrown in, the highest of the Southern Upland hills (but not the wildest – that’s Craignaw, on Walk 6).

And the Murder Hole? It’s a pool of unwholesome reeds and black water at the corner of Loch Neldricken. It’s bottomless and never freezes over, and it’s where the bog brigands of 200 years ago used to fling the unwanted carcasses of their victims. At least, if you believe The Raiders, by SR Crockett – a friend of Robert Louis Stevenson and almost his equal when it comes to a hill-walking adventure story to tingle your boot soles.

The alternative descent from Loch Enoch, by the Rig of the Buchan, is probably even nicer than the three lochs, while also being easier and drier underfoot. So if Merrick is to be your only route in Galloway, you may prefer to switch at Loch Enoch to this alternative descent.

Merrick from the east – Redstone Rig runs down the left-hand skyline

Diversion to Fell of Eschoncan

Near the top end of the car park a small bracken path heads up the steep side of Fell of Eschoncan – it was created with a strimmer for the first running of the Merrick hill race, but persists as a rugged alternative route over Fell of Eschoncan. The faint path then passes across the rough plateau of Bennan, staying below, and east of, the radio masts to continue north across a sometimes soggy wide col to join the main path up Benyellary.

Continue up the road beyond the lower car park for 10 metres, then take a small informal path through woods on its right. After 150 metres this arrives at Bruce’s Stone, perched high above Loch Trool.

Bruce’s Stone is a granite erratic – a smaller but similar granite lump is nearby alongside the arrival path. The bedrock below the monument is greywacke sandstone, darker than the granite, here with the knobbly ‘hornfelsed’ texture – it has been cooked by the heat of the granite intrusion, whose edge is only a few hundred metres away. So the glacier has not had to bring the Bruce’s boulder very far. However, some Galloway granite is found hundreds of miles away to the south and southeast.

Turn left at the Bruce’s Stone on a wide, well-made path past two benches to the upper car park at the end of the road.

At the top end of this upper car park a wide path sets off uphill (northeast), with a large signboard announcing it as the Merrick Trail. The path is rugged, with peat and boulders – it gets much better higher up. In 200 metres it arrives above the wooded slot of the Buchan Burn, with waterfalls heard below.

After running for 400 metres above the stream, the path turns uphill a little and contours through mature plantation. It is now wide and smooth and will remain so for the rest of the ascent. At Culsharg bothy the path turns uphill to a forest road. The bothy has recently been restored with glass windows and midgeproof door. Turn right for 50 metres, crossing a stream, to find the path continuing uphill to the right of the stream. It emerges over a carved stone marking the top of woodland to pass through a gate on open hillside and then reach the wall up the southwest flank of Benyellary. The path runs up to the right of the wall to the large cairn on Benyellary.

Here the wall and path bend left, descending around the rim of the Gloon corrie onto the well-defined ridgeline of Neive of the Spit. The path to the right of the wall follows the very brink of the corrie; the one up to the left offers additional views westwards towards the sea and Ailsa Craig. At the end of this connecting ridge the wall and path bend slightly left (north) up the summit slope of Merrick. After 200 metres the path bends right, away from the wall, to rake up the hill flank to the white-painted trig point on Merrick.

GRANITE AND GREYWACKE

Just above the granite junction on Redstone Rig

The granite of the Galloway Highlands melted its way up into the standard Southern Upland rock, which is the chunky deep-ocean sandstone called greywacke. Around the edges of the granite the country rock is cooked and crumbled, so all around Mullwarchar and Craignaw lie valleys such as the Silver Flowe. But a mile or two further out, the surrounding greywacke was baked and hardened, and this tougher rock rises in the hill ridges of Merrick and the Kells and Minnigaffs. The result is a ‘metamorphic areole’, also known as 50 miles of fine hill-walking in a ring around the granite heartland.

The difference between the Merrick’s greywacke and the granite around Loch Enoch is fairly noticeable as you descend Redstone Rig. Dark, uniform grey gives way to paler speckles; layered sandstone gives way to rounded granite. To inspect the actual rock junction, take a leftward line down the ridge and look for a striking slab sloped towards you. The granite–greywacke junction crosses the downhill rockface below (NX 4343 8532).

Approaching the granite, the heated greywacke loses its bedding structure. On the other side, approaching the magma chamber wall the granite forms only the smallest crystals, so the visible speckles are lost. Thus the difference between the two is less marked at the actual junction than across the hill as a whole.

Descend south of east, with steep drops into Howe of the Caldron on your left. In clear conditions, once at the plateau edge it is possible to see Loch Enoch spread below; head for its right-hand corner. In mist, the wide, lumpy Redstone Rig provides no clear line – aim somewhat to the left (north) of the loch corner, and on reaching the loch turn right along a sketchy path. The loch’s southwest corner has a fence line running down to a tiny golden-sand beach. Here switch to Walk 6 for the Rig of Buchan descent.

Continue along the loch’s south side on a sketchy path for 250 metres, then turn up to the right into a grassy gap between two hillocks. At once this becomes a little pass, just 15m higher up than the loch itself. The actual outflow is at the northwest corner, but here, and also the northeast and southeast corners, are almost outflows too.

A peaty path forms in the little pass and leads down just west of south, with a small stream on its left, to reach the reed-infested western corner of Loch Neldricken, known as the Murder Hole.

Like Doone valley on Exmoor, the Murder Hole is a fictional place that has made it onto modern maps. In The Raiders by SR Crockett, the evil Macaterick bandits murdered passing hill-walkers for our sandwich snacks then trampled our bodies into the bog. Old postcards show it as an oval enclosure quite separate from the main lake.

Once past the soggy hollow put to such grim use by the fictitious (but very vicious) Macaterick clan, the path bends southeast across a flank of Meaul to reach the corner of Loch Valley. It runs along the loch’s western end, then down beside its outflow, the Gairland Burn. The path here can become very soggy; an alternative path is to the left of the stream.

After 1km down the high hidden valley, the path contours out to the right – a ‘seat stone’ is alongside the stream here. The path, of peat puddles and tall rounded boulders, is tiring in descent. After passing behind a knoll there’s a view of Loch Trool ahead, and the path slants down through bracken to the track running through the woods beside the loch.

Follow the track ahead, past Buchan farm, with its conical turret almost buried among the oaks, and across Buchan Burn below a waterfall. Where the uphill track bends right, take a small path ahead. The peat has eroded away to bare rock on the short pull up to Bruce’s Stone.

Merrick path, looking back along Neive of Spit to Benyellary