Wigtown, Scotland is the book capital of Scotland due to an abundance of bookshops set in a small, quaint town. Each fall it has a book festival. It is on the south coast of Scotland and is home to just under 1000 people, most of whom seemed surprised to see us there as travelers.
My mum, Luba, picked Wigtown because we both love books and bookstores and she had read a book by the owner of one of the bookstores, which was all about the town and his bookshop. A small town full of bookstores and characters sounded good for me, so we made the trip south from Edinburgh. (For a detailed account of the trains and buses required to reach Wigtown, see this post here.)
We stayed at Hillcrest House, a charming bed & breakfast in an old house a short walk from both the town and the sea and run by a lovely couple from England.
The town was delightful. It is tiny. You could see everything twice in an afternoon and still get to bed early. We spent two nights and 1.5 days, which was perfect. We got to go to all of the bookstores that were open (some of them randomly close on certain weekdays), have leisurely teas and strolls. Very pleasant.
The most famous of the bookstores is The Bookshop, known for being the book store of the aforementioned book, for being Scotland’s largest secondhand bookstore, and for its cluttered and creative interior.
We browsed there for quite a while and first edition Alfred Dunhill pipe book. (I collect cigar, pipe, and tobacco books.) Sadly, the owner was away for on a buying trip at the time.
We twice went for shopping and tea at Beltie Books, which we loved due to the proprietor, who had a demeanor that was to our liking and made excellent cakes.
We loved all of the bookstores and walking to visit all of them. There is a website for Wigtown’s booksellers, but it does not include all of them. There are good maps and brochures that have better listings available at most of the shops (but certainly found at Beltie’s). The shops do keep some odd hours, so if visiting all of them is your goal, do some planning ahead of time. We were winging it, and missed some.
There are a number of cafes and eateries, including one that is all vegan and vegetarian.
I have no idea how the town functions outside of the book festival, business-wise. It is utterly charming, but everyone we spoke to seemed so surprised that we were visiting on holiday. It is quiet and certainly not overrun with tourists. We loved it though. All the locals were so friendly and…colorful. It felt somewhat like being in a BBC show set in a small town. Who knows, maybe a show set in the town is forthcoming.
We also took walks on some of the trails around the town. One led to the sea, past fields of sheep.
Another led to a martyrs execution site where the ‘Wigtown Martyrs” were tied to stakes and drowned in the 17th C for, effectively, being staunch Catholics and refusing to take an oath to denounce a guy who had denounced the King.
That’s basically it for Wigtown. Books, tea, strolls, and martyrs. It was a lovely and relaxing stop and we both liked seeing a bit of small town Scotland, as well as the journey there and back.
With our books (Luba bought quite a few) we made the journey back north, this time to Stirling.
