Outdoors: Galloway Forest Park is perfect for an autumn day - or night

For the past few years I have spent a weekend at the Wigtown Book Festival. I'm always amazed at the calibre of authors and guests that attend this event in a wee town on the road to nowhere, and not exactly on the doorstep of the bigger cities. But while I was there blethering away to Ian Rankin (apologies to the Rebus writer for the nonsense he had to endure), about ten miles away there was another gathering of star spotters.

Last November the Galloway Forest Park became the UK's first International Dark Sky Park, and indeed one of only five in the whole world, and that Friday night in September was meant to have been a corker for staring at the Milky Way. When we arrived on the Saturday morning it was a beautiful clear autumn day - absolutely perfect for a yomp through the forest. However, us walkers were in a definite minority as most of the people in the car park were pulling on the Lycra and getting on their bikes.

As I wandered into the visitor centre the children dashed off to the play area and no doubt would have been quite happy to stay there, although I soon had them marching through the trees on the Kirroughtree Lade Trail.

It was difficult to imagine, as we walked through the forest in silence, apart from the children running around kicking up leaves, obviously, that this used to be a hive of activity and source of wealth to the locals. Below where we walked are the remains of lead mines, the contents of which were shipped from the south west of Scotland all around the world. You can still see some of the pits and bridges and the lade itself, which was the means by which water was transported from the Bruntis Loch to the workers.

There's plenty of wildlife around here as well, so it's worth keeping a look out for deer and red squirrels, although I think they could hear us coming from afar, so not much was spotted apart from birds. Such is the sorry state of my knowledge that I couldn't identify which ones we saw.

Next year, if there's a clear night, I'll leave the stars of the written word for a while and come and have a look at the galactic variety.

The Kirroughtree trails are three miles east of Newton Stewart on the A75, www.forestry.gov.uk/scotland

This article was originally published in The Scotsman Magazine on Saturday 23 October 2010.