Rough Island

Rough Island sits in the Rough Firth on the Solway coast, a National Trust for Scotland bird sanctuary reached across the sand at low tide from Rockcliffe or Kippford a little further round the shore. Oystercatchers and ringed plovers nest on the shingle, and the Trust, which has owned the 20-acre island since 1937 (one of its earliest holdings in this part of Galloway), asks visitors to keep off it altogether in May and June, while the birds are nesting.

Outside those months it’s an easy, open walk with views back over the firth towards Mote of Mark, an early medieval hillfort on the mainland shore. The causeway floods fast on the incoming Solway tide, faster than it looks, so check the crossing times first and don’t linger once the water starts to turn.