ups and downs – 21 Sep, 2018
Day 43 Land’s End to John O’Groats – Twin Willows to near Corrie Common
Distance: 30km
Cumulative distance: 1095km
I ended up having a pretty poor sleep, despite the spacious surrounds of the camping hut that Colin and Richard had given me last night. It turns out that barbed wire fence I became snagged on yesterday managed to pierce my blue sleeping mat. Not again! I taped up the hole, and the leak wasn’t as bad as when I did it all the way back in Devon. It still deflated slowly through the night but was still just about usable, despite waking up at about 3am with my hip poking into the elevated wooden surface I was sleeping on. I didn’t even bother blowing it back up, I just rolled over and managed to get myself back to sleep as the rain soothingly fell outside. I’ll have to wait until Glasgow before I sort out the sleeping mat situation, it’s shaping up to be a busy few days up there! There was no sign of Colin or Richard in the morning but I got chatting to another local who gave me the most efficient directions to follow up to the border. The rain had stopped, and first bounce at the MCG was only an hour and a half away…it was shaping up as a super day.
I took off back down the road and went past a pub in the middle of nowhere (it never ceases to amaze me how these places survive but even at 9.30 in the morning there were folk inside). Liddel Water marks the border, and crossing that entailed a bit of road walking down a winding hill and finally to the sign welcoming to Scotland at long last! I took a (poor) selfie with the sign in the background, and the weather seemed to flick like a switch from overcast to sunny. Otherwise, nothing too much changed for a little while and most of the day was spent walking on roads. After the border I continued for a mile or two, and veered off road at an abandoned railway line which the guidebook suggested I use. Perhaps it was a decent thoroughfare when the book was published 25 years ago, but nowadays it’s just an overgrown, tangled mess so I found myself walking in a field beside it which was also fairly unkempt. It was at this point I somehow managed to get a radio feed to the MCG. For so much of this walk I’d been out of mobile reception, but in this southern corner of Scotland the footy Gods were smiling on me. Or so I thought. By the time I abandoned the railway idea and jumped back onto the road, Collingwood were up by several goals and seemingly unstoppable. Half an hour later I switched it off in disgust – the American chap Mason Cox was marking everything on a violently ill David Astbury, and I was close to retching myself.
Langholm was the destination for lunch, and I was looking forward to some Scottish hospitality in the pub there to lift my mood. But that wasn’t forthcoming either. I strolled into the place and was met by a middle-aged lady asking what I was possibly doing in this fine establishment. I told her I was looking for a feed, and she begrudgingly led me through to a delightful little carpeted dining room adorned with framed paintings and resembling something out of Downton Abbey. The locals enjoying their weekly lunch on the other side of the room didn’t seem to mind that I was there, but the lady in charge seemed quite offended by my presence. Perhaps she was a pissed off Richmond fan too, although she didn’t have the personality of a Tigers supporter. Or even a house brick for that matter. Fortunately the chef was on my side, because the burger he whipped up for me was dead set one of the best I’ve had on this entire trip. I checked the score quickly and noticed the Tiges had managed to peg it back to 20-odd points. Just as I revved myself up for a comeback, the Pies kicked a couple and killed the contest. All I could do was pray that West Coast or Melbourne could do a better job than we did next weekend. I finished up and strolled over to the bar to square the bill up with Ms Personality Scotland 2018. I removed a crisp 10 pound note to cover the 9.90 price printed in the menu, and was slightly taken aback when she told me it would in fact be 10.90. I pointed out that the menu suggested otherwise, to which she replied:
“Hmph, maybe it hasn’t been updated. 10.90 please.”
I didn’t labour the point, there was a brick wall outside I was keen to go and headbutt, so I gave her an extra pound and relieved her of my presence. At least she filled my water bottle up when I asked.
Right, so we weren’t going to need that early morning pub in Glasgow any more I thought as I left town and followed more roads. The landscape had changed pretty quickly, and all of a sudden I was surrounded by bare yellow hills in almost every direction. It wasn’t as stunningly beautiful as the Lake District had been, but it was glorious scenery nonetheless and not a half bad way to distract me from what had happened at the MCG. Talk about a missed opportunity – that flag was there for the taking, it had been a weak year and we were clearly the strongest throughout the home and away season. Anyway, shit happens…we’ll get it back next year. Dusty wasn’t fit. Astbury was buggered. Cox played the game of his life and Collingwood just hit form at the right time. They’re still pretenders though, and they’ll bottle it like they always do next week. I took plenty of solace in that thought as I kept trekking down the road, past the beautiful mound curiously named Golf Hill. I was looking for a little farm called Hopsrig at which point I could finally turn off the bitumen and head on up into those enticing yellow hills. An old stone bridge greeted me just past the farm, and I stopped for a little snack before ploughing off road. From here I was staring at about a 40-odd km stretch without shops or any facilities, the most remote section of the walk so far. And it was all rather exciting – this is what it was all about and Scotland was not about to disappoint. But it did give me a swift reminder of exactly where I was with a heavy 10-minute downpour which disappeared as quickly as it had come over. Fortunately it was still quite warm, and the slog uphill over the next couple of miles helped dry everything off pretty quickly. I was walking high above a burn (the Scottish word for stream) and looking for a left-hand turn that would take me off the major trail and through the forest. The left-hand turn never came and I sensed I’d gone past the spot marked on the map, which was confirmed when I looked at the position of the sun which was starting to think about calling it a day. I backtracked and hacked my own path where I thought it was supposed to be. That was tough going through very thick and deep grass, down and over a little creek, and then back up a hill. To my right was Ward Hill which had a wind turbine near its peak, and I knew I needed to pass just south of that. I soon spied another wind turbine so I aimed for the gap between the two, and finally crested the hill and cleared a barbed-wire fence. I looked up as the view before me opened up and nearly fell over. There were wind turbines everywhere! And these things were massive, and metronomically noisy.
I thought I’d rediscovered the track, but soon realised it took me to the base of a wind turbine. I tried it in another direction and the same thing happened. This was not the track at all. About 200m away I saw an unsealed road and figured that would take me away from the wind turbines, but getting to it meant crossing a horrible patch of dead forestry ground. That required me to hack through piles of dead trees, steeply down a hill and over the burn down below, then back up across more horrible land and finally to the road. This felled forestry land is very difficult to walk on. It’s just piles of dead tree branches and trunks which offer very little support, and have a nasty habit of sinking under your body weight. The road on the other side of all this proved to be another dead end, it just led to more wind turbines as well. So I crossed back to where I started and decided to just walk in a north westerly direction and see where I ended up. The sun was starting to lick the horizon by now, and I was running out of time to find a suitable campsite. This forestry ground was hopeless, and I was keen to get away from these wind turbines and all the warnings about the dangers they presented to uncredentialed imbeciles who had somehow stumbled into their presence. Soon enough I was back amongt rows and rows of dead trees, and pretty soon that proved impossible to walk on for any great distance. I walked parallel to one of these rows of trees and, you wouldn’t believe it, but 100 metres down the road I found the path. I could’ve hugged it. That quickly took me to a farm gate, and an abandoned shed which was unsuitable for a shelter unfortunately. Further along the path started running parallel to a little burn, and not too far beyond that a nice flat patch of ground presented itself. It was close to the water but suitably elevated, and the ground wasn’t too rocky. The only negative was the wind turbine about 50m away which grunted at me with every spin. Otherwise it was a beautifully clear night, and I was in Scotland. The sun was just about down by the time I cooked up my pasta to draw the curtains on a strange day.
