Walter Scott dubbed Dumfries, a neighbouring town, the "Queen of the South". JM Barrie went one better and transformed this magical atmosphere into Never Never Land, the setting of his beloved children's book. The author fondly recalled playing on the banks of the River Nith as a child.

He admitted: "When the shades of night begin to fall, certain young mathematicians shed their triangles, crept up walls and down trees, and became pirates in a sort of Odyssey that was long after to become the play of Peter Pan. For our escapades in a certain Dumfries garden, which was enchanted to me, was the genesis of that nefarious work."

The area also inspired Robert Burns, Scotland's most venerated poet. He held court at the Globe Inn on High Street in Dumfries - and even crudely scratched poems onto a windowpane with a diamond stylus. Burns died in a simple sandstone house, aged just 37, in 1796. Visit his humble home (free; Burns Street, Dumfries; 01387.255.297) or the more content-rich Robert Burns Centre in an 18th-century watermill (£0.60-1.20; Mill Road, Dumfries; 01387.264.808).

That's just the tip of the intellectual iceberg. This region claims the invention of the bicycle (and a famous British children's ditty about a centipede. The locals are still trying to live that one down). Kirkcudbright's shimmering light attracted famous Victorian painters, who formed an artists colony. EA Hornel, Jessie M King, her husband EA Taylor and Charles Oppenheimer were the most prominent. Burns claimed no student's training was complete without a season there.

Shimmering shore and mud in Auchencairn

Even the town's downsides - like the sprawling mud flats left by intense tides - were turned to good advantage by these bohemians. Lord Cockburn didn't find it quite so appealing, however, during his 1844 visit. "The painters don't dislike this substance, which they aren't required to touch. It is not unpicturesque, of a leaden grey colour, very shiny in the sun even silvery in appearance; utterly solitary, except to flocks of long-billed and long red-legged sea birds."

Cockburn, less enchanted with the muck, considered it "a world of sleech...a town surrounded by a lake of bird-lime." Yet that didn't stop him from coining the "Venice of Scotland" tag and admiring its charms. "I doubt if there is a more picturesque country town in Scotland. Small, clean, silent and respectable it seems the type of place to which decent characters and moderate purses would retire for quiet comfort," he wrote in "Circuit Journeys". (CONTINUED...)