New Galloway Forest is one of my favourite places which can be approached from several directions, I normally leave the A75 at Newton Stewart and make my way up the forest road A712 to the town of New Galloway. (You could also go from Castle Douglas, its just my personal view that the aforementioned is the more scenic and there are plenty of stopping places.)
After winding your way up the A712
for a short while you will see on the right the
Glen of the Bar ("Barr" in gaelic means a crop or top) from which
it is thought that the Celtic people, 1000 years ago, used the valley as
a corral or trap for hunting deer, elk, bear and wild pigs. The animals
were driven into the valley where upon spears and stones were thrown
to make a "kill".
It is equally possible that the Celtic folk cultivated this small hidden glen 2000 years before the old Edinburgh pack horse road appeared.
The story goes that nearly a hundred years ago a packman burning peart from the Glen of the Bar found a hoard of ancient metal items, including pins,a gold ring, silver wire, coins, ect. in his fuel, the youngest dating back 1000 years. A suggested explanation being that a Dark Ages metal worker had collected the metal for reworking and had hidden his hoard in the Glen, but never returned to retrieve it.
It can now be seen in the National Museums of Scotland in Edinburgh where it is described as the Talnotry hoard.
