This circular walk combines easy tracks and a rougher moorland burn, visiting two historic bridges and the original of tarmac.
Bog Factor
Paths, tarmac lane, tracks and a moorland section.
Walkers car park, Kames near Muirkirk.
None to start.
NS696264
The walk begins from the walkers car park in Kames. Take the path from the back of the car park by the information board. This soon reaches a junction - fork right here (the main path ahead is the route towards Cairn Table). The routes passes behind the Kames Institute and adjacent houses, before reaching a minor road.
Turn left along this road and continue southwest to a ruin once the house of John Loudon MacAdam. The track has some of the remains of MacAdam's early experiments with road surfacing - he came up with a process that resulted in a hard, smooth surface known as "Macadamisation". He moved here to manage the 9th Earl of Dundonald's tar works before buying the company himself in 1790. A short distance from the ruin the earthworks associated with the facility are visible. Turn right ('River Ayr Way') to descend alongside the outline of a row of miners' cottages to pass a picnic table and then descend to reach Tibbie's Brig (originally Garpel Bridge).
Tibbie (Isobel) Pagan was a poet, a contemporary of Robert Burns; she ran a small inn adjacent to the bridge tending to the needs of the local workers. Don't cross the bridge, instead turning left onto a path by the nearside of the burn. Go through a gate and then continue upstream; there are only traces of a path in places. The route stays close to the Garpel Water until some old waymarker posts indicate where to bear left - to the right of a dry grassy side valley - climbing away from the burn.
Continue ahead across moorland to reach a track. This is a historic drove road, linking Muirkirk with Sanquhar 28km away, and was once well used by coach traffic as part of a route from Glasgow to Dumfries. Turn right and follow the track until it reaches a second bridge across Garpel Water - Sanquhar Brig. Formerly of wooden construction, a modern metal footbridge provides access to the moorland and hills beyond.
From this point, turn around and return along the drove road, but ignore the outward route branching left in order to reach a cairn commemorating John Loudon MacAdam built from stone taken from the remains of his kilns.
From this point continue back to the junction in stage 2. Turn right here and retrace your outward route along the track back to the sadly derelict Kames Institude and the start of the walk.
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