Unique Winter Experiences Start Here

Winter is a great time to throw yourself into something new. The South of Scotland offers you a wonderful range of unique experiences just waiting to be discovered. Learn to blend your own gin, sew a quilt sampler, create cheese from scratch, discover tales of the ghostly past or be guided around the stars in a truly Dark Sky. Great winter experiences Start Here!

Shambellie House

Where: New Abbey

Take advantage of the rolling programme of courses taking place at Shambellie House this winter and throughout the year. Located just a few miles south of Dumfries, this creative centre for arts, heritage and wellbeing courses, workshops and events runs a diverse programme. Experienced tutors lead classes from stained glass making to quilting, still life painting to music. All visitors benefit from Shambellie’s stunning views, glorious grounds and an abundance of flora and fauna which can’t fail to inspire.

Mostly Ghostly Tours

Where: Dumfries and various locations

This award-winning team delivers tales of ghostly delight around Dumfries and Galloway, with different tours on offer – ranging from excursions to graveyards and eery quiet vennels to one at the Globe Inn highlighting its ghostly past and famous patron, Robert Burns. How fitting for January when the celebrations of Robert Burns’ birth reach fever pitch. The team specialises in delivering tales of the paranormal intertwined with historical facts. Learn about the characters who lived at Crichton Hall before delving into the Crichton Memorial Church, Crypt and Undercroft and learning the ghostly tales of this historical Dumfries site. In February you can head off on the inaugural Haunted Highways Tour – a bus tour with a difference. Discover Scotland’s most haunted road with reports of screaming hags, eyeless phantoms and a menagerie of unearthy creatures. Check out Mostly Ghostly’s current tour offerings here.

Cocoa Black Chocolate School

Where: Peebles

Who wouldn’t love to spend a day surrounded by chocolate? Get your tempering skills up to speed with a wonderful day out at the renowned Cocoa Black Chocolate School under the masterful tuition of UK World Chocolate Master Ruth Hinks. Perhaps you want to understand the finer points of French patisserie or triumph with your truffles. Stay ahead of your baking commarades with a course highlighting emerging trends in chocolate or be the first to show off your financiers! A fabulous day out and an experience you’ll not soon forget – book with a friend or family member for a special shared experience.

The Ethical Dairy

Where: Gatehouse of Fleet

The Ethical Dairy offers a full-day cheese making workshop. Try your hand under the watchful eyes of the their cheesemakers. You will make two cheeses and get an understanding how you can make cheese at home. In addition you can book in for the farm tour which is led personally by farmer David Finlay who has pioneered cow-with-calf dairy farming at their Rainton farm, harnessing natural systems and using agroecological principles. The dairy shed and milking parlour is overlooked by a viewing gallery, so visitors can see what’s happening without interrupting the work of the dairy or causing stress to the cows and calves.

Famously Hawick tour

Where: Hawick

Billing itself the cashmere, tweed and whisky town, Hawick offers visitors a luxurious tour with a twist! Journey through the factories and see how the weavers, knitters and distillers practice their craft. Some of the world’s finest cashmere and tweed is produced here and is available to buy at factory prices. Sample whisky with The Borders Distillery and finish with tea and cake at the Johnstons of Elgin Coffee Shop. Discover for yourself what fashion houses, designers and discerning visitors have known for more than a century, and source luxurious goods in the very place where they were created.

Gretna Green Experience

Where: Gretna Green

For the romantics amongst you, why not start the New Year off with a trip to one of Scotland’s top 10 Visitor Attractions? Gretna Green’s history began in 1754, when runaway couples, seeking marriage outside of the legal restrictions in England and Wales, began converging on Gretna Green. Young couples would be married by the blacksmith over the now world-famous marriage anvil with the blacksmiths’ wife standing as witness. Explore this wonderfully romantic history when you visit the Famous Blacksmith’s Shop and see the anvil that was struck as part of the wedding ceremony, supposedly forging the lives of the young couple into an unbreakable bond. Today a wealth of wedding options are on offer from handfasting to wedding ceremonies with shopping, restaurants and hotels all on site to offer you the perfect romantic winter escape.

Peebles Hydro’s 1881 Gin Distillery School

Where: Peebles

As gin has proliferated in popularity in recent years, so has the interest in how to arrive at the perfect distillation and exactly which botanicals make up your favourite taste. You can be the master of your next G&T with a tour of Peebles Hydro’s 1881 Gin Distillery. You will meet ‘Felicity’, the 150L gleaming copper still, which makes up to 220 bottles each day. Afterwards the distiller will guide you through a distilling class creating and crafting your very own bespoke tipple. Won’t that be a great story to tell your friends on your return?

Guided Stargazing

Where: Galloway Forest Park

Did you know that the South of Scotland has the UK’s first International Dark Sky Park in the Galloway Forest Park? Here, more than 7000 stars are visible to the naked eye – as opposed to just a few hundred in cities and towns where light pollution obscures the less visible stars. To find out more check out our Dark Skies blog and information page.

Wrap up warm and book a Star Picnic with freelance ranger Elizabeth Tindall for experiences you won’t quickly forget. And if you want to head off solo, Moffat is Europe’s first Dark Sky town with dimmed street lighting to allow for optimum viewing and a community observatory to get an even closer look at the stars.