Start at Portpatrick, the western end of the Southern Upland Way, the 214-mile route to Cockburnspath opened in 1984 as the UK's first officially recognised coast-to-coast walk

Walk the first stage from Portpatrick to Castle Kennedy

The Southern Upland Way starts at Portpatrick and runs 214 miles coast to coast to Cockburnspath. Its first stage climbs off the harbour along the cliffs and turns inland to Castle Kennedy, where two castles stand in gardens laid out between a pair of lochs.

Southern Upland Way: Portpatrick and Castle Kennedy

Portpatrick and the Mull of Galloway

Cairnryan

Six nights in a loop from Cairnryan: the Mull of Galloway, Kirkcudbright's painters and Threave's island castle, Wigtown's books and the Galloway Forest's dark skies, then Culzean and Burns's Alloway.

Galloway and the Ayrshire Coast from Cairnryan

Walk out to the lighthouse at the southern tip of Scotland

Look for guillemots and razorbills on the cliffs of the RSPB reserve

Pick out Ireland, the Isle of Man and Cumbria from the headland on a clear day

The Mull of Galloway is the southernmost point of Scotland, a headland of cliffs with an RSPB reserve on top and Robert Stevenson's lighthouse of 1830 standing 26m above it. On a clear day the view takes in Ireland, the Isle of Man and the hills of Cumbria.

The Mull of Galloway: Scotland's Southernmost Point

Book the guided tour and walk the cliff path bolted to the basalt

Cross the tubular bridge, the signature structure of Wise's 1902 design

Go through the tunnel cut into the cliff and past the sea caves

Look for seabirds nesting on the rock faces above and below the path

Berkeley Deane Wise, a railway engineer, bolted a walkway onto the basalt cliffs of Islandmagee and opened it to the public in 1902 at sixpence a head. Newspapers called it a perfect marvel of engineering and said its beauty baffled all description. The railway ran out of money in the 1930s, the path closed before the war, reopened briefly, and shut again in 1954. It came back in August 2015 as a guided tour across bridges, past caves and through a tunnel cut in the rock, with the sea directly below your feet.

The Gobbins: A Path Bolted to the Cliff Face

Attend at least three events at the Wigtown Book Festival, which began in 1999 and is the second largest in Scotland

Browse The Bookshop, Scotland's largest second-hand bookshop with about 100,000 volumes, in Scotland's National Book Town

See the Wigtown Martyrs' Monument and the site where Margaret McLachlan and Margaret Wilson were drowned by the incoming tide in 1685

Wigtown is Scotland's National Book Town, and its book festival, first held in 1999, runs for ten days every autumn and is the second largest in Scotland. The Bookshop holds about 100,000 volumes, the largest second-hand stock in Scotland. The Wigtown Martyrs' Monument remembers Margaret McLachlan and Margaret Wilson, drowned by the incoming tide in 1685, and Bladnoch Distillery is just outside the town.

Wigtown: Scotland's National Book Town

Walk the formal garden compartments and find the plants that should not survive this far north

Tour the house and find Castlereagh's rooms

Walk down to the shore of Strangford Lough through the estate

Find the Temple of the Winds on the high ground above the lough — it opens on summer Sundays only

Mount Stewart stands on the east shore of Strangford Lough, the Irish seat of the Stewarts, Marquesses of Londonderry — among them the 2nd Marquess, better known as Viscount Castlereagh, who was Britain's Foreign Secretary at the Congress of Vienna. The gardens are the reason to come: the mild Strangford microclimate lets things grow here that have no business surviving in Ireland, and the planting is laid out in a series of formal compartments running down to the lough.

Mount Stewart: Castlereagh's Garden on Strangford

Ride the graded trails from the Kirroughtree visitor centre

Look for red squirrels in the forest around the centre

Kirroughtree, in the forest above Newton Stewart, is one of the seven 7stanes mountain-bike centres in southern Scotland, with graded trails through a forest that holds red squirrels, red deer and ospreys and looks out towards the Irish Sea.

Kirroughtree: Granite Singletrack Above the Cree

Walk up through the three rings of stone walls to the church at the centre

Find the rebuilt sundial and the stump of the round tower in the inner enclosure

Find out how the tide mill on the shore was dated to 619

Call into the visitor centre for the story of the site and its mill

Stop at Sketrick Castle, the tower house on the road out to Mahee

Nendrum, on Mahee Island in Strangford Lough, is the only major early monastic site in Northern Ireland whose excavation has been published in full. Tradition says St Mochaoi, who gave Mahee its name, founded it in the 5th century, and its abbots appear in the annals until 974, when the Four Masters record that the abbot Sedna Ua Demain was burned in his own house, perhaps in a Viking raid. Three dry-stone walls ring the hill, one inside the other, much of them rebuilt by H. C. Lawlor, who excavated the site between 1922 and 1924: the innermost holds a ruined church, the stump of a round tower and the graveyard, with a sundial of about the year 900 — one of the few early medieval sundials known — rebuilt from fragments found in the dig; the middle one held what the excavators called the monastic school, or workshop. On the shore below, a tide mill has been dated by its timbers to 619, the oldest excavated tide mill anywhere in the world. On the road out, Sketrick Castle guarded the causeway to the west of its own island.

Nendrum: The Island Monastery and the Oldest Tide Mill

Visit Burns Cottage in Alloway, the house that his father William Burnes built and where Robert Burns was born on 25 January 1759

Tour the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum, rebuilt in 2009 at a cost of £23 million and holding more than 5,000 Burns artefacts including original manuscripts

See Thomas Hamilton's Burns Monument, begun in 1820, and its gardens beside the River Doon

Cross the Brig o' Doon, the setting of the finale of Burns's poem Tam o' Shanter, and see Alloway Auld Kirk

Robert Burns was born on 25 January 1759 in the cottage his father William Burnes built at Alloway, and Burns suppers are held on or near that date every year. The Robert Burns Birthplace Museum, rebuilt in 2009, holds more than 5,000 Burns artefacts, including original manuscripts. Thomas Hamilton's Burns Monument, begun in 1820, stands in gardens beside the Doon, and the Brig o' Doon and Alloway Auld Kirk are where Tam o' Shanter ends.

Alloway: Burns Cottage and the Brig o' Doon

Visit Melrose Abbey, the Cistercian abbey founded in 1136 by David I, where a lead casket believed to hold Robert the Bruce's heart was found in 1921 and reburied in 1998; find the mason's inscription 'Be halde to ye hende'

Visit Dryburgh Abbey, where Sir Walter Scott is buried

Stop at Scott's View over the Tweed and the Eildon Hills

Walk part of the Borders Abbeys Way between the two abbeys

David I founded Melrose in 1136 for Cistercians from Rievaulx, and a lead casket dug up at the chapter house in 1921 is believed to hold the heart of Robert the Bruce. About 3 miles (5km) south-east, Dryburgh stands on the banks of the Tweed with Sir Walter Scott buried in its north transept, and Scott's View looks over the whole valley to the Eildons.