Craigend Farm

If you’ve got kids with you, you might like to make Mabie Farm Park (15 minutes’ drive) your first stop, so they can have a run around, try out quad biking and zoom down the hillside slide, before having a cuddle with alpacas, donkeys and lambs (the latter usually in spring). A treat for younger kids is to be had at Dalscone Farm Fun (10 minutes) with soft-play areas, mini-tractor rides and bouncy castles. Add a bit of Scottish culture into your holiday mix with a wander around the grounds of medieval, moated Caerlaverock Castle (15 minutes), once a defence fortress against English marauders. Tick a stately pile off your list with a visit to Drumlanrig Castle and Gardens (40 minutes), open for tours of its art collection hosted in elegant galleries and strolls in extensive woodland, or learn about Scotland’s most famous poet at Robert Burns Ellisland Farm (20 minutes), where Burns wrote some of his greatest works. What about a day at the beach? It’s half an hour’s drive to Southerness Beach, with its landmark whitewashed lighthouse, for strolls along the sand and views over the Solway Firth to Cumbria.