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The Solway Firth is an estuary on the borders between Scotland and England. It connects with the Irish Sea.
The Solway Firth is an area of lowland surrounded on three sides by uplands. Many rivers of the western borderlands of Scotland and North West England drain to the Solway Firth. The main Scottish rivers in the Border Country drain south across the Southern Uplands to the Solway Firth, while the main English river, the Eden, drains the northern Lake District and Pennines and flows north. The valleys provide the only easy routes between Scotland and England along the west coast and have been used by generations of travellers, and now the large numbers who use the M6 and A74/M74 between Carlisle and Glasgow.
The main rivers are:
Annan
Dee
Eden
Esk
Nith
Annan
The Annan, like the Nith, flows along outcrops of softer rocks among hills dominated by hard rocks, flowing past Lockerbie and Annan before entering the Solway Firth.
The Annan, a much shorter river than the Nith which flows parallel to it, rises just north of Moffat. Here a great gap - called the Devil's Beef Tub - makes a col between the Lowther and Tweedsmuir Hills. It was described by Scott in Redgauntlet as "A deep, black, blackguard-looking hole of an abyss...at the bottom there is a small bit of a brook, that you would think could hardly find its way out from the hills that are so closely jammed in around it."
What Scott is describing is, indeed, a dramatic feature in the Southern Uplands, originally formed as a result of river capture and later much enlarged by glacial scouring during the Ice Age.
Dee
One of the main rivers of the western part of the Borders is the Galloway Dee. The area drained by the Dee is much lower than the borderland to the east, heavily scraped and scoured during the Ice Age and now a maze of small rock basins, some large lochs and many peat bogs.
The Dee now 'rises' at the waters of Loch Doon, although nature has played no part in this for Loch Doon's waters naturally ran to Ness Glen and Ayr. Engineers have diverted the waters of the loch through a nearly 2 kilometres (1 mile) long tunnel to feed the Dee. Loch Ken has also been altered through the building of a dam which makes it much deeper than its natural form. Clatteringshaws Loch is not a true loch at all, but an artificial reservoir designed to store yet more water. Together these lochs, and the rest of the water flowing in the Dee, are extensively used by a series of power plants as part of the Galloway hydroelectric system.
Finally, after much interference to its natural flow, the Dee makes its way past Castle Douglas to the sea at the once fortified town of Kirkudbright, before flowing finally into the Solway Firth.
Esk
The Esk, the easternmost of the Scottish Solway Rivers, does not flow over soft rocks like the Nith or the Annan but has to cut its narrow valley into hard rocks as far as Canonbie at the English border, where it reaches the lower region and softer rocks of the Solway Firth.
The Esk rises on the southern flank of Ettrick Pen, flowing as the White Esk through Eskdalemuir down Eskdale to Longholm before crossing south of the border to Longtown and the Solway Firth.
No major towns are found on this river. It is crossed, but not followed, by the A7, running north from Carlisle.
In 1803 Robert Southey described it as of 'quiet, sober character, a somewhat scenic melancholy kind of beauty... in its green hill... of a mountainous sweep and swell, green pastures where man has done little...". Many would find this a fitting modern description, too.
Nith
The headwaters of the Nith rise far to the north in Ayrshire in an area you might at first expect to drain to the Clyde. But, in fact, the Nith has extended itself by capturing some of the headwaters of the Clyde.
Look for the sharp bend in the upper Nith opposite the headwaters of the Lugar Water in Ayrshire and there is a dry gap (the New Cumnock Gap containing Crawick Moss). This gap marks the former flow of the Lugar Water before it was 'beheaded' by the faster-flowing Nith.
The Nith cuts a deep valley because it flows over a number of soft rocks in an upland area that is otherwise mainly hard rocks. It follows soft sandstone rocks in the Sanquhar area and then finds more soft rocks around Thornhill and Dumfries before flowing finally to the Solway Firth.
For much of its course through the Southern Uplands the river flows among vast tracts of planted coniferous forests.
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