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Come all you wild young men
A warning take from me...
The Moorfoots are a rough bunch of hills. They're not straightforward for navigation and while they can have good paths in, they're generally horrible underfoot. I knew all this but I'd always felt that some use could be made of the First bus service to Peebles. The problem was finding another end to the route but now they've opened the Borders railway. So that opened a path across the Moorfoots.
On a beautiful misty morning I got off the train at Stow. I'd a ridge to cross before hitting the hills proper.
From above I saw the next train and the theme for today, windfarms. They're everywhere, it's vandalism. Each one, of course, can power 20,000 homes. On this still November day, nothing was revolving. Hey, that's about 100,000 powerless homes. Still, the sunshine was ironing the creases from my soul and I'd find a reason to be grateful for a windfarm before the end of the day.
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- From the ridge to Windlestraw Law
At the bottom of the ridge I met a keeper and talked to him for a while - he was the only person I encountered all day. Then on good vehicle tracks I went up easily to Deaf Heights. This was one of the points of the trip, a tribute to the excellent Edinburgh band from 30 years ago, the Deaf Heights Cajun Aces.
They never made it big but if you wanted a gig where you just kept dancing, they were your men. Their album "Les Flammes d'Enfer" got rereleased a couple of years ago. Talking about hell, windfarms were now to be seen in all directions.
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- Onward from Deaf Heights
The ground now became properly Moorfoot, deep heather and marsh. I was grateful there had been such a long dry period, I can't imagine what it would have been like otherwise. At the top of Windlestraw Law I was knackered and behind schedule.
There was a nice view of the Eildons, but. The long stretch to the B709 was tough but quite swift. Once across the road it became heartbreaking. There were deep troughs in the peat, mostly with very soggy bottoms. Messy to get into and frustrating to get back out. There were few tracks, even animal tracks. I've suspected the waterproof qualities of my Anatom boots. It was a testing day for them and they didn't come up to the mark.
From Blackhope Scar, I looked longingly at the dry ridge of the Pentlands. I'd only a couple of hours of daylight left and the ground wasn't improving. Then, hallelujah, 3 kilometres of windfarm with associated tracks. Two of the turbines were beginning to start up which was a bit eerie but I raced over this section onto one last boggy effort.
With 5 kilometres to go I hit a superb track.
There was a beautiful sunset too and fog below me. All very pretty but it got dark and misty and in the last stage I was tripping over unseen sheep. I'd no credit on my phone so I'd to ask a nice lassie on the bus from Eddleston to text Gill saying I was safe off the hill. This was very kind of her but she needn't have added "He looks a bit disturbed." to the message.
