River Cree

The tributaries of the Cree are the Minnoch, Trool, Penkiln and Palnure which drain from the Range of the Awful Hand, the labyrinthine range of mountains and lochs, bogs, burns and crags, rising at its highest to The Merrick, Galloway (2,764 ft or 842 m above sea level), 12 miles (19 kilometres) north and visible from Newton Stewart.

Most of the time, the Cree is fordable and the old site of the main ford, just below the present bridge, is still detectable in the street layout of Newton Stewart.

This bridge is named after the fish – the sparling or smelt (Osmerus eperlanus) which still breeds in the estuary, one of only three sites in Scotland.

Before there were proper roads, and before the railway came to Galloway in the 19th century, bulky goods such as coal and fertilisers, gravel and grain, timber and stone, were transported by sea.

Wigtown Bay is now a recognised wildlife reserve, where salt marshes are grazed by sheep all year round and by huge flocks of wild geese in winter.

The silty Cree estuary is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, partly due to the sparling that breed there.