Viewpoint Voices at Knocktinkle

I'm excited to be working on this new project with the National Scenic Areas (NSAs) of Dumfries and Galloway.  Called 'Viewpoint Voices' the idea is to work with a group of people who live near one of the NSA viewpoints (there are several spaced along the Solway Coast), and develop new writing inspired by these places.

A group of enthusiastic people met with me last week in Gatehouse to begin Viewpoint Voices at Knocktinkle Viewpoint.  Knocktinkle is located just north of Gatehouse of Fleet, up in the hills.  I haven't found a photo which begins to express the sense of exposure, though I quite like this one for its huge stones in the dyke, and the lowering clouds over faraway Galloway hills.

But if you stand beside that dyke, and turn your head slowly through 180 degrees, you see all the way from a ribbon of sea, up the climbing earth, through woodland and soft glens, all the way into the mountains.  There's barely a single-track road in sight, barely a roof to be seen.  The people of Gatehouse chose this place as a favourite destination, and I can quite see why.

So I'm really looking forward to our next meeting on the evening of 19 September, when everyone will have been up to Knocktinkle, and will turn up with notes, sketches and ideas to write about this marvellous place.  And after that we'll be recording the 'Viewpoint Voices' and they can be heard in Mill on the Fleet during Day of the Region weekend on 1st and 2nd October.  Click here for more info.