Scotland in the Early Middle Ages to be adopted for house building, often combining layers of stone with turf. Place-name evidence, particularly the use of the prefix "pit", meaning land or a field, suggests that the heaviest areas of Pictish settlement were in modern Fife, Perthshire, Angus, Aberdeen and around the Moray Firth, although later Gaelic migration may have erased some Pictish names from the record. Early Gaelic settlement appears to have been in the regions of the western mainland of Scotland between Cowal and Ardnamurchan, and the adjacent islands, later extending up the West coast in the 8th century. There is place name and archaeological
Solway Firth were designated as conservation targets in 2013, as Allonby Bay - an inlet of the Solway Firth - was put forward as a candidate for a Marine Conservation Zone. A long-distance walking route, the Annandale Way, runs through Annandale, from the source of the River Annan, in the Moffat Hills, to the Solway Firth; it was opened in September 2009. Unlike other parts of the west coast of Scotland, the Solway Firth is generally devoid of islands. However, there are a few examples: The Isle of Whithorn is actually a peninsula. The Solway Firth forms the estuary of the River