A Tushielaw tree-o

[nigheandonn]

I've had my eye for a while on two things in the Ettrick Valley - the Tushielaw Inn, one of those places fascinatingly in the middle of nowhere, and a little ring of five hills which looked like an interesting challenge to get round in a day.

It didn't work out that way at all - warlike trees meant I basically got halfway round, two and a half hills instead of five - but it was still good to finally get to an area that I've skirted all the edges of.

Even getting to Tushielaw was quite of a challenge - the transport sites show a bus running, but the bus company's own site wasn't admitting to it, and it definitely had a school bus number, although that's not conclusive in very rural places. But whether it was meant to or not, the bus itself was having nothing to do with other passengers - I'd always been resigned to walking in, but I can't say the thought filled me with joy. But it was a lovely day, and a beautiful valley, and Ettrick Bridge was a surprisingly nice little village, with an unexpected knitted heron and a pub which fed me tea, and although walking so far on the road is quite hard on the feet, it was fine.

I reached the inn at Tushielaw about 7, in nice time for dinner - fairly quiet, but there were a handful of other people staying, and it's a nice spot - if my room (£30 a night) was basic, the others must be pretty luxurious!

I was on the go fairly early the next morning - a lovely breakfast, and out just after 9. The first hill was just round the corner, across the bridge over the Ettrick Water - it would probably be possible to go up from the road, but as I'd walked past it the day before there had looked to be a decent way up from the west, or even a track in the little valley of the double Stanhope Burn, if necessary.

The farm access track seems to have been diverted to follow the river, but at Cacraside I found I had to turn up onto a much more industrial looking track, through a tall gate in a new deer fence.

New track

The hill seemed to have a bit of a hole scraped in it by the new track, so I didn't go any further round, but just headed upwards - a fairly featureless toil.

An upward toil

The one bright side to the climb was that the views were pretty good - back over the river to the inn in the trees, but also down the valley towards Ettrick.

Along the valley

At last I came up into a kind of hollow at the top of the hill, with a little rampart of higher ground lining one side and leading towards the summit - the ground in the hollow was a bit boggy, but once on the higher ground I was onto a trace of a path.

Bumps on the summit

The summit is just the highest point of the highest bump, but someone had put a tiny cairn on it.

Cacra Hill summit

A kind of path, and then a kind of track, led on along the ridge of the hill, sometimes quite damply - in places it looked like some kind of machine had been trying to cut the moss into railway sleepers. Once I came over the edge of the hill I could see the point of it all - it looked a bit like a giant had been trying to plough a giant field, but presumably it was all intended for lines of trees.

Lines in the hill

I had had an idea of crossing over and following down the track on the other side of the March Sike, partly to avoid any cows who might be roaming in the area, but the track on this side now ran much higher up the hill than showed on the map, and I made my way down to it between the ploughed stripes - the deer fence, which I'd forgotten about, was now between me and the track on the other slope, and any prowling cows were presumably outside it.

The track was surprisingly good walking - substantial and quite smooth - and led down in wide zigzags to the road, passing a parked yellow digger.

New track

The lower slopes of the next hill, Law Kneis, were really just on the other side of the road, but the Ramkle Burn on the other side of the road was a fairly formidable obstacle, and my plan was to head down to the bridge at Buccleuch and follow forest tracks almost to the summit. It was a nice walk along the road, more or less following the windings of the burn.

Following the river

It's a fairly lonely road - no buildings between Cacrabank near the junction and the little cluster at Buccleuch, where an access road runs over a bridge and between the farm buildings to head for the forest and another unexpected house in the edge of the trees.

Buccleuch

From here most of the way to the summit was a walk on forest roads, uphill at first, and then a long stretch along the side of Hazel Rig.

A way through the woods

I generally enjoy walks through a forest - the tracks are good underfoot, the trees smell nice, and these days there's often been enough felling going on to give a decent view.

After a bit my objective came into view, a higher hill partly cleared and partly still forested.

Law Kneis ahead

Passing two junctions brought me to a place where I had to turn left and follow along the side of Law Kneis, which seemed to have been fairly recently cleared, and where an odd circle marked on the map turned out to be an old circular sheep fold among the trees.

The slopes of Law Kneis

The real track runs out below the summit, but a kind of track led on upwards - very rough, a mix of felled rubbish and deep muddy pools. The firebreak shown on the map is still there after a fashion, but it was so deep in long grass and piled up tree stumps that it really looked more difficult.

A rough track

Further up even that runs out, and the next part looked better but almost felt worse - not so much a walk as a wade through knee high grass. The sun had come out, which made a nice change, but it was still a slow climb, slanting up to avoid patches of bracken.

Deep grass

It wasn't really very far to the top, though - not really any easier underfoot, but more heather than grass. The edge of the unfelled forest runs across the top of the hill, and the high point looked to be near a stray individual tree.

Law Kneis summit

It was quite wildly windy now that I was out of the shelter of the trees, and so I slipped into a gap in the edge of the woods for a break - green and peaceful and decorated with toadstools.

Hiding in the woods

Despite the more challenging stretch at the end, this was a pretty good way up - a long but pleasant walk in from Buccleuch, with good track underfoot and nice views around.

It was on the way down that I should have paid more attention to other people's accounts of the hill, but although I knew a lot of jungle warfare had gone on, I thought that the main problem was that people had tried to come the shortest way, straight up and down through the trees from the west. I had two options in mind, both heading roughly north - a possible way down through a break in the trees towards Gamescleuch, or a longer but apparently easier way right along the edge of the open ground to Annelshope.

There didn't seem to be any obvious start to the way down to Gamescleuch, and so I headed on to the fence junction which was the beginning of the other way down. The two sides seemed to have swapped, with new trees where the map showed none and cleared ground where the map showed trees, but the line in between was clear enough, although deep in long grass.

The way down

This first stretch was not great, but not awful either - after a while there was often a little trodden path, mostly skirting the edge of the trees rather than keeping to the fence. Sometimes the main line of the path seemed to cut off into the trees instead, as if heading for a main track, but since I didn't know what had made the path, and my map showed neither trees nor track, I kept to the route I was on

Further down I came to a real problem - a place where the two sets of trees came so close together that old fallen trees from over the wall were lying on the younger trees. The first trunk or two I could slip under, and the next bit wasn't too hard to get around in the fringe of the forest, but beyond that I was pushed deeper and deeper into the trees to avoid the trunks blocking the way, and it wasn't always easy to find a way through.

Fallen trees

Still, I knew from the view from above that it wasn't really a very long stretch, and I emerged in the end, only slightly scratched, although I was shedding pine needles everywhere I went for quite a while afterwards.

I thought the worst might be over, but it was really only beginning, as the grass and the smooth slope ran out, and I found myself in and out of the steep valley of the burn, sometimes deep in undergrowth and sometimes on old dead branches, or sometimes crossing backwards and forwards over the burn on unstable stones, as the only walkable ground changed from one side to another.

It was a long stretch where I never really knew what was coming next, and just when it looked like it was coming to an end the burn plunged into a deep valley in the woods, with a huge fallen tree between me and any possible way down. But I had the sense to look at the map, because I thought that the woods at the end were only a small patch, and the map agreed and sent me off across the neighbouring field to the access track - still very rough underfoot, but no more acrobatics.

The last field

A few minutes later I was crossing a bridge and finding children playing in a field on the other side, which was the start of the caravan and campsite at Hopehouse, which had a very welcome shop, and an equally welcome bench where I sat and drank fizzy juice.

There was no chance now of reaching the two northern hills, but Ward Law was still possible, and seemed to be one of the more frequented of the hills, so I headed along the road to where a faded kind of track let up to the ruined tower at Thirlestane, where paths were shown on the map climbing through the woods.

Thirlestane Tower

There didn't seem to be any way on up from there, but another bit of rough track entrance became a rising path through the trees, not particularly well used, but not unused either.

Climbing path

At the end of the trees the path led through a solid gate in a tall fence, and then led on uphill more and more faintly - things growing thickly underfoot seemed to be a characteristic of these hills, and different enough from anything I'd met before on small Borders hills that I really hadn't expected it.

Across the hillside

There were more unexpected trees on this hill, fringing the very top of the hill above me and forming a clump ahead which I thought there must be a way round higher up. Eventually and unexpectedly I could see something else above me, a track running along and apparently heading through the trees.

But as I came closer I could see that the track bent back on itself before reaching the trees, and there was now an unbroken line above me as well and no way round that way.

Track and trees

There was a kind of break through the trees at the far point of the track - you could find a way through if you really wanted to - but I decided that I had had quite enough of fighting my way through trees for one day, especially when there was still a lot of deep grass and bracken to cross beyond them - it was about 5:30, and heading back to Tushielaw for dinner seemed like a far better plan, especially since I had completely forgotten to eat any lunch while fighting with the earlier trees.

Since once again neither the trees nor the track were shown on my map I couldn't be sure where the track led, but as it was slanting back downhill from where I was, there seemed a decent chance that it was heading down off the hill towards Hopehouse again - and if not there was still a chance of coming down less steep ground at the nose of the hill, or cutting back down to where the path I'd followed up came out of the woods.

An easy way down

But it turned out that the track led in a well behaved fashion down to a gate I'd noticed on the way along the road, so for once in the day I had quite an easy time - good track and good views, and a mile or so along the road back to the pub and a well earned meal.

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