chasing the sun – 23 sep, 2018
Day 45 Land’s End to John O’Groats – Moffat to Wanlockhead
Distance: 32km
Cumulative distance: 1156km
I woke up at about 2am in a haze of nausea, and despite my best effort, was unable to sleep it off. It took about 10 minutes for my mind to convince my body that I probably needed to go and expunge some of that second main course that I’d over indulged in last night, so I hauled myself up and tramped through the cold over to the toilet block. I hung about there for 45 minutes and managed to keep everything down in the end which I guess was a decent result. When I made it back to my tent I noticed it was wet yet again – it had dried out in the hour or so before sunset yesterday, but now was covered in a layer of dew. When I woke again in the morning it appeared there was a light dusting of frost. That would explain why I was pretty chilly at times throughout the night even though I was wearing three layers in my sleeping bag, including my jacket.
Fortunately I was feeling much better by morning, and the sun was blazing away as I went over to brush my teeth. I subconsciously patted my pockets as I came back to my tent and realised I’d left my phone up in the toilet block. I scurried back and had a look around but there was absolutely no sign of the thing. What an idiot – all of my photos were on that and it was my only way of connecting to the outside world barring the use of library computers which were fairly few and far between. It was nowhere to be seen in my tent either which was a concern because there weren’t too many places it could be hiding in there. Ahh well, hopefully someone handed it in at reception I thought as I embarked on the daily ritual of packing down the tent. All of the clothes went in, then my books, torch, and other bits and pieces. I started stuffing my sleeping bag into its sack and what do you know, my phone appeared. One of life’s great reliefs seems to be when you find something valuable you thought you had lost forever. I couldn’t give a toss about the handset itself or even the lack of connectivity for a few days, but it would’ve been such a shame to lose all of those photos. Bullet dodged! Me and my phone headed to the shops before ducking into the Moffatt Woollen Mill for a full Scottish brekky. This place was absolutely huge, and chock full of anything and everything you could possibly hope to find in a Scottish store – tartan, whisky, little stuffed Loch Ness monsters etc. It was all a bit disorienting but I grabbed some postcards before finally finding my way back out of the exit. All of this eating breakfast and faffing about had been at the expense of the clock, and it was well after 10am by the time I was finally on my way.
I knew I was in for a big day based on what I’d read in the guide book, and what the map was showing me. There were plenty of tightly-bunched contour lines to negotiate, and patches of forest which would mean sections of trail finding. Fortunately I was blissfully ignorant to the extent of what was ahead of me. This would become the toughest day of the entire walk, harder even than that stretch on the Offa’s Dyke Path where I butchered my knee. It started easily enough – I left town via a main road and hooked up with an even busier road before crossing over a daunting intersection and picking up the Southern Upland Way for the first time. Discovering a new trail was always exciting and this was no different. The Southern Upland Way runs for 338km across the south of Scotland, linking the two coastlines in a south west to north east direction, assuming you start at the trailhead in Portpatrick. It’s the longest of Scotland’s 29 so called Great Trails, and an under-rated beast of a thing if my exertions on its path were anything to go by. Those walking its entire length will need to ascend a staggering 7775m throughout, which isn’t far off climbing to the top of Mount Everest from sea level.
Buoyed by the new trail, the sunshine and the fact I had my phone tucked carefully away in a zip-up pocket, I followed a road uphill and into some forestry land. This stretch of the trail went on for miles and it wasn’t remotely easy. There were paths shooting off in different directions, so I tried to stay as true to the map as possible. Eventually I walked into a big forestry plantation and across a low, flat pasture down to a little burn and then into more trees. That’s when the hills began, and they weren’t made any easier by the occasional felled tree that blocked out the entire path. The first of these I managed to clamber over with some careful maneuvering , although that still meant a few scratches here and there. Further along after a long haul uphill I stopped at a wee bridge for lunch and to rest my legs. Then I was back into another section of uphill and before too long came across a monster tree that blocked out the entire path. Going over was impossible, it was several metres high in sections. It was also too dense to hack my way through it. I was going to have to find a way around, and that meant deviating from the path quite a way down a hill. Quite a long way as it turned out, this tree was massive! I found its base and tried to climb over the top of it. One of the branches didn’t hold my weight so I came crashing back down and picked up a few more scratches and a sore bum. I fought my way through tangles of branches in the dense undergrowth and finally put the tree behind me, before turning back to the trail which I thought for a moment I may have lost. Luckily I hauled myself a little way uphill and found a little pathway through the forest from where I looked back to the tree blocking the way. That thing will take some serious shifting when the Forestry Commission finally get around to taking care of it.
I negotiated a little more uphill and finally popped through the trees, rewarded instantly with a sweeping view over the yellow hills of southern Scotland. The terrain was about to change and just in the nick of time – that hilly forestry plantation had been tough going. I followed a line of trees up a fence over some boggy ground and finally came to a corner at which the fence line turned right as the path took me down towards the Daer Reservoir. This was super exposed up here, and I realised how fortunate I was that it was a sunny day with virtually no rain around. Wind was still a factor but visibility was superb. Way off into the distance I could see what looked like a golf ball on top of a high hill. The guide book suggested the last hill I would be scaling today had a golf ball looking weather station on top, but this thing was still a little speck off in the distance. That couldn’t possibly be it! But it was, and I knew it, and that meant possibly a dozen more miles or even more still ahead of me. Not to mention actually scaling that hill which already looked like a monster even from this distance. This was turning into some day.
The fenceline went on for miles towards the reservoir, slowly taking me downhill and then eventually across the dam wall and out to another road. I’d made good time in that section but my legs were definitely starting to feel it now. At least the golf ball was ever so slightly bigger. I passed a couple who were hiking in the other direction and pressed on, back into some more forestry land taking me in the direction of the bigger hills. There were some fascinating stone circles a little way off the path, ruins of another time where farmers tried to protect their land from attack many centuries ago. It was along this stretch I came along a sign informing me I’d made it to the halfway mark of the Southern Upland Way. I’ll have to come back one day and do the whole thing, I thought. This trail was intriguing me despite its degree of difficulty. I continued along, bent down to fill my water bottle up in a stream and then finally made it to a road which curled around for maybe a kilometre before I saw a Southern Upland Way signpost taking me off into more hills.
I’d lost sight of the golf ball now I was at the base of the next set of hills, and a glance at my map suggested these next few miles were going to be hellish. I had a snack for afternoon tea and psyched myself up before charging off up the first hill. This one would’ve been maybe 500m at its highest, and I scaled it in pretty fast time despite some tricky terrain where several chunks seemed to be missing out of the ground. From there I could see the golf ball again and now it was much closer, but still seemed quite a long way away. I was also walking due west now, and the sun was starting its long descent to the horizon. It was bright, and glarey but allowed for majestic views over the hills to the south. There was another hill between me and the golf ball, but I took solace in the fact that I’d scaled most of its height already. That was before I noticed the path took me down a few hundred metres, before forcing me to reclaim that height on the toughest stretch of uphill I would endure on the entire walk. From the base I looked up and saw a seemingly endless vertical slog with no indication of where it might end. There was an impossibly steep fence to my left which would at least keep me going in the right direction. Every time I thought I’d summited, I looked up and there was more of this hill above me. That went on for about 20 minutes before I finally saw the golf ball appearing, much larger than I imagined it would be, and realised the worst of it was surely behind me. I looked back down and was shocked to see how much height I’d gained. Someone ought to just build a bridge between the two hills and save the next walker from having to do that.
Anyway, I pressed on because that sun was getting lower in the sky and I still had a way to go before Wanlockhead. The fenceline continued to pull me closer to the golf ball and I was fooled by another optical illusion, soon realising I would have to go down again before climbing up the final hill. Luckily it didn’t take me down as far as the previous descent, and it only took maybe 15 minutes to get myself up to the weather station. At 710m Lowther Hill is the highest point on the Southern Upland Way, and the highest part of my walk between Land’s End and John O’Groats. The view from here was incredible and worth every step – the extent of Scotland’s hills is something that will never cease to amaze me and I could see plenty of them in all directions from up here. But there was no time to dally. That sun was close to reaching the horizon, and I still had to get off this chilly hill and down into Wanlockhead, almost 300m in altitude below where I was right now. I embarked on more painful downhill, and passed a memorial to a Canadian serviceman who I think may have died there in World War Two. I could see Wanlockhead up ahead of me as the sun entered its final phase of setting and quickened my pace despite my sore legs. The sun was just about down as I entered Scotland’s highest village, and it cast an eerie light across quiet houses and playgrounds. There wasn’t a soul about and it was bitterly cold now the Sunday sun was providing no warmth. My thoughts turned again to how lucky I’d been that there wasn’t any rain today as I pointed my feet towards the pub. When I opened the door, the darkness and quiet of Wanlockhead melted away as about 10-12 locals turned to embrace me into their convivial warmth.
They set me up with a little glamping pod out the back for 25 quid, and then told me to come back in for a few pints after I’d set myself up. I cooked up some noodles, made up a bed and wrote in my diary before hurrying back down. There were still about six or seven locals drinking their pints, and they were fascinated with my story. It turns out the two hikers I’d passed back near the reservoir had stayed the night before, but otherwise it had been a quiet week with the autumn starting to set in and pave the way for winter. It had been a horrible winter in town last year with huge snow drifts and freezing temperatures. But the locals were proud of their little slice of southern Scotland, particularly Bob who had moved up from England some 40 years ago. He was one of the tour guides down at the Wanlockhead Museum which I’d passed on my way up to the pub. He told me stories of last year’s winter as I drained my pint, and before I knew it the bartender had poured me another one thanks to Harry at the end of the bar who gave me a nod as I said thank you. Two of the other locals behind me jumped on the jukebox and started blasting out some ACDC, noting the Australian-Scottish connection. What an incredible little corner of the world to stumble upon after such a strenuous day’s walking.
