Landscape of Faith

I never tire of visiting Scotland. I love Scottish landscape and history. I first holidayed there well over twenty years ago with my husband Nigel. Since then I think we’ve stayed there every year but one, when we found we missed it terribly and couldn’t wait to go back again. From the Highlands to the Lowlands, we always find somewhere exciting and interesting to explore.
The Solway coast seems an appropriate place to begin my whistle-stop tour of our favourite holiday places. This beautiful landscape has witnessed political and religious strife through the ages. In the 1990s we visited the Whithorn Dig while the archaeological excavations were taking place; there’s now a museum dedicated to the finds of this historic site. Last year we visited St Ninian’s Cave nearby. St Ninian brought the light of religion to Whithorn some time late in the 4th century. He built a church here, and after his death Whithorn became a place of pilgrimage; even royal visitors such as Mary Queen of Scots endured long journeys to visit his shrine.

You can find out more about St Ninian’s story and how the footsteps of faith through the ages led to the Killing Times and the shocking tales of the Covenanters’ sufferings in ‘Scotland’s Landscape of Faith,’ the cover feature for this month’s Highlander magazine.
Images © Nigel and Sue Wilkes.
St. Ninian’s Cave, Whithorn.
Covenanter Martyrs’ Graves, Wigtown.