A trip to Wigtown

We spent a week running a bookshop in rural Scotland. We’re here to tell you all about it.

Where on earth is Wigtown?

Wigtown is a windy little town on the west of Scotland in Dumfries and Galloway. Basically, head up to the top of England, keep going for a bit, and turn left. With a high street predominantly made up of second-hand bookshops, it’s known now as Scotland’s National Book Town.

In a not unusual turn of events, Freya discovered about it in a book. Shaun Bythell’s The Diary of a Bookseller, to be precise. Bythell owns the town’s largest bookshop, and documents his day-to-day life across a series of diary entries, each one nuttier than the last. Suffice to say, we wholeheartedly recommend it.

How to run a bookshop

It’s everyone’s dream to run a bookshop, right? Wigtown has taken that idea and run with it, opening The Open Book a few years ago. It’s an Airbnb with a simple premise: live in the flat upstairs, and run the bookshop how you want during your stay. It’s clearly not a totally bonkers idea, because it’s currently booked out until 2023. We happened to hop in on the back of a last-minute cancellation, and still can’t quite believe our luck.

The journey up to Scotland

Somewhere north of Carlisle

It’s a long ol’ schlep from Bristol up to Wigtown — about six hours if you’re legging it. Car really is the only option. Public transport can probably get you up to Dumfries, but getting out to Wigtown from there is pretty tricky. Buses are sporadic at best.

On the way up, you’ll drive right through the Lake District, which is obviously the perfect place to stop for a tea, scone and necessary leg-stretch. Kendal was our pit stop of choice, primarily because we wanted to try the town’s legendary Mint Cake. The drive up from there to Wigtown is breathtaking. It’s worth taking an extra day to stop off at any of the places signalled with brown signposts — they’re usually incredible historic landmarks, often just a little way off the road, rarely with an entrance fee and always with a stunning view.

The town itself

To be honest, not much has changed since pictures of the town were captured in the 1800s, which we discovered in the local exhibition at Wigtown’s very own library. Minus the flashy Co-op (because who doesn’t need essentials), the town is littered with cosy second-hand bookshops along the two sides of town’s main street, including a very traditional-looking local butchers.

The local history is well preserved, too. The aforementioned exhibition has relics dating back hundreds of years, and provides a fascinating insight into life in the area, which definitely helped reinforce to us the all-important sense of community that permeates through Wigtown.

Surrounding areas

North of Wigtown is Newton Stewart, a ‘large’ town with a fantastic gin distillery, which we definitely made the most of. Down the peninsula, south of Wigtown, we visited the Isle of Whithorn, a local fishing village, which, again, had plenty of character and local history for us to delve into. The highlight of this area was the ruins of the 13th-century St Ninian’s Chapel, which overlooks the sea. Epic is an understatement.

From the Isle of Whithorn we drove along the coastline to be met by more gorgeous green landscapes that cover the whole area around Wigtown. We stumbled across the Torhouse Stone Circle — a stunning formation of rocks dating back to the Neolithic age. Think Stonehenge, but on the side of a road and with only a sleeping truck driver for company. No entry fees here, my dears. While we didn’t get stuck into any long walks, there’s definitely lots of appeal to travellers who wish to spend their time outdoors.

What we learnt

It was a week we won’t be forgetting in a while. Have a read of our final thoughts on the place here.