Dumfries and Galloway
This page: updated 20 April 2011
Holiday in Gretna Green
Dumfries and Galloway Scotland
Coming for a holiday or wedding? About Gretna, Gretna Green, Eastriggs and Kirkpatrick Fleming
A fine centre for exploration, Gretna and Gretna Green provide plenty of good accommodation and the area is bypassed by the busy M74 and A75 trunk roads.
Surrounded by level and fertile farming country, Gretna is within easy reach of the Solway Coast, famous worldwide for its wealth of bird life in winter and a place where the tides race in over miles of sand and mud flats. Within easy reach too are the hills and dales of northern Dumfries and Galloway - whilst Carlisle, Hadrian's Wall and the English Lake District are only a short drive away.
However - it was marriage and romance that made Gretna Green famous. English marriage laws were strict but in Scotland anyone over the age of sixteen could marry without parental consent.
All that was required was a simple declaration before a responsible witness - a blacksmith, for instance. There are several blacksmiths houses from the days of cattle droving when cattle were shod at the border village of Gretna Green on their long walk from Galloway through England.
Many elopements ended happily here, while the village has provided novelists with innumerable romantic stories of lovers driving furiously to Gretna Green pursued by irascible fathers or guardians on horseback or in carriages.
The World Famous Old Blacksmith’s Shop and other marriage venues are at the village of Gretna Green where every facility is offered to visitors, confirming all their ideas of romantic Scotland - a museum of Gretna marriages with kilted bagpipe player, opportunities to reaffirm their own marriage vows, and a display of carriages and coaches, which brought so many eloping couples to the village.
The modern village of Gretna, a short distance away, is an interesting example of 20th Century town planning, built to house munitions workers during the First World War. Spaciously laid out with a large green, the houses, in a simple neo-Georgian style, are symmetrically arranged, a scheme later incorporated in the Housing and Town Planning Act of 1919, the source of many of the new towns built in subsequent years.
Eastriggs
In the village of Eastriggs is The Devil's Porridge where you can learn about the story of the greatest munitions factory on earth. 30,000 people from all over the world worked in HM Factory Gretna during World War 1.
Kirkpatrick Fleming
In Kirkpatrick Fleming you will find King Robert The Bruce's Cave. Situated in quiet peaceful grounds of 80 acres of wooded and secluded estate beside the River Kirtle is a cave said to have been
a hiding place of Robert Bruce.
Where is Gretna?
Self Catering accommodation in Dumfries and Galloway:
Self catering accommodation in Dumfries Town and surrounding area | Self catering accommodation in Moniaive and Thornhill | Self catering accommodation in Sanquhar and Wanlockhead | Self catering accommodation in Annan | Self catering accommodation in Lockerbie and Lochmaben | Self catering accommodation in Gretna and Gretna Green | Self catering accommodation in Langholm | Self catering accommodation in Moffat| Self catering accommodation in Newton Stewart, New Galloway & Galloway Forest Park | Self catering accommodation in Portpatrick and The Mull of Galloway | Self catering accommodation in Stranraer, Luce Bay and Cairnryan | Self catering accommodation in Wigtown, Whithorn and The Machars | Self catering accommodation in Castle Douglas | Self catering accommodation in Dalbeattie and the Coast (Auchencairn, Kippford and Sandyhills) | Self catering accommodation in Gatehouse
of Fleet | Self catering accommodation in Kirkcudbright
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