walkhighlands

Washed off the Way - Bellingham to the middle of nowhere

Date walked: 07/10/2024

Time taken: 2 days

Monday 7th October
Bellingham to Byrness


There was no breakfast where I was staying, but fortunately the cafe in the town opened early - unfortunately I didn't get going until a good bit later than I intended. But I was really back on the track before breakfast - it was interesting to actually see the road I'd walked up in the pitch dark the night before.

Just after the bridge the path turned off to the riverside - three days earlier I'd been beside the South Tyne, now I was beside the North Tyne (although I wouldn't be beside the combined Tyne until another trip later in the month).

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North Tyne

The path then wandered round to sneak up on the village from the back, past a peculiar house being built on a kind of platform, and then up a little path past the local holy well to the main street and the cafe. I was still feeling friendly towards Bellingham - pleased that there was tablet on sale in the cafe, which meant I was definitely in the north, but also just because everyone was nice.

After this I was really heading into the wilds - one night in Byrness, where there was nothing except a B+B which did evening meals, then one night in the College Valley, where there was really nothing except beds, so before I left I had to stock up on food to get me through to the end, and also see if I could buy a new bag cover or some elastic to fix it, because the forecast for the next day was very wet, although it turned out that I couldn't.

There didn't seem to be any waymarkers on the main street, although plenty of signs for other things, so I just had to figure it out on the map - right onto the road towards West Woodburn, and not right onto another road to somewhere else, and on up the hill. The view over to the other road on the left kept looking very familiar, but although I've been to Hareshaw Linn that's all in the valley, so maybe it just looked like somewhere else.

Eventually I hit a marker, at the start of a good farm track - by this point I was a bit worried that this was another place where the path had been moved, especially since one of the gates had a sign on it saying that there was a bull in the field - which there wasn't.

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The first farm track

A left hand turn through the farm brought me onto field paths - I'd picked up the markers again, although a crowd of cows hanging about at the top of the hill led to me leaving them for a detour through a sheep field and a little strip of woodland. From there I was out of the fields and into moorland, skirting round below a small hill and heading for a clump of trees which held the next farm - grass and reeds at first, and then a patch of heather moorland, which made a nice change as it was generally less soggy.

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Hareshaw

The path skirted below the buildings at Hareshaw and then it was mostly downhill to the first tiny road, the only excitement being someone coming up behind me riding two horses (or at least riding one and leading the other).

This was the pattern for the first half of the day - up over a moor and down to a tiny road. Oddly, today I didn't mind at all that the Pennine Way had given up on landmarks and was just wandering through nothing - I quite like emptiness as long as it's high up and I can see out.

The next section was quite nice - more heather, more sense of being in the hills, stone cairns marking the tiny summits. Better names, too - Lough Shaw, Deer Play, Lord Shaw.

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Lord's Shaw

From the last little summit I came down to an even smaller road - it was well after two, so definitely time to sit down and have lunch, even if the only place to sit was on a tiny stone slab bridge over a ditch, with my feet in the trickle of water.

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Lunchtime

The cafe had told me a story about how they usually put sandwiches in a box with salad and crisps, but they could wrap the sandwich up and give me a packet of crisps to save me carrying the box, and I'd just said yes to everything - I didn't realise until I opened it up that they had put all the salad *inside* the sandwich, probably more salad than tuna. But it was good, and so was rocky road made with gingernuts - best meal of the trip!

The next stretch was up and over, across the shoulder of a hill with a little pepperpot monument on top, parallel to another tiny road which seemed to end at the next building.

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Padon Hill

Down the other side, where I was sure I could hear voices, and was quite relieved to discover that there really were three men sitting off in the middle of the heather doing some mysterious countryside thing. Then up again in the edge of the forestry, quite an unpleasant climb, steep and rough and wet, but with a view at the top which almost made up for it.

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Finally at the top

The path turned a corner and followed the forest fence, passing old boundary markers - just a scattering of young trees at the moment, but I was definitely heading for forest. A stonier path between older trees brought me onto the main forest road - the road hadn't really ended at the building, it turned out, but just changed into a different kind.

There were three miles to go until I came out the other side of the forest, and a few ups and downs, but at least it was almost all on solid track - there were two places where the map and the guidebook showed the route leaving the track for no obvious reason, but there was no sign of the first on the ground, although I did pass two portaloos standing all alone at a crossroads.

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Forest tracks

The second place where the map showed the route leaving the track was at the top of the hill - the markers were gone but the path was still visible, and I thought it might make a nice change from track. It did at first, but further in it was very wet and very narrow, and I'm not all that keen on being stroked by wet trees.

Coming down the other side of the hill I started to see and hear signs of the A68 over on the far side of the river - the first time I'd come near a really busy road since the brief encounter with the A69 two and a half days earlier. For some reason this is the land of long names - the building at the end of the forest track is Blakehopeburnhaugh, and the next one I would pass was Cottonshopeburnfoot. Very border names, though - it was nice to be in the land of hopes.

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The land of long names

There was a car park with toilets and information, and some more track, and then a surprisingly small and wet path keeping closely to the river. At the back of the campsite I made it back onto track again for one last stretch - it wasn't at all dark, but the sky was getting a bit dramatic.

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Evening light

Byrness is an odd place - some of it scattered along the road, and some of it clustered into streets that should be in a much bigger place. Another bridge brought me across the River Rede for the third time and into an open space behind the church with information about the night sky - then not actually onto the road, but onto another track to the group of houses below the road.

There's really only one place to stay in Byrness, and it already had a slightly abandoned feeling - there was me, and then one guy staying the next night, and then it closed for the season. My room was narrow, and then a door at the other end opened into a bare mirror image of it - presumably this was a natural result of turning two terraced houses into one, but it did feel a bit as if I'd wandered into a creepy book.

They told me off for not requesting a meal beforehand, but fed me anyway, and then I just went to sit in my warm bed until it was time to go to sleep.

Tuesday 8th October
Byrness to the border ridge


The forecast hadn't changed the next morning - I had hoped it might, because a forecast in advance for steady rain (or even for constant sunshine) so often does turn to showers by the day.

My plan was to break the notorious last day at Mounthooly at the end of the College Valley, but it still meant almost 20 miles on that first day, and quite a climb onto the shoulder of the Cheviot. My average speed over the trip had been 2mph regardless - inclusive of meal breaks and cow avoidance and photos and slow slippery mud and everything else - so I decided that a start after an early breakfast should be good enough, and less depressing than trying to start at daybreak.

It wasn't pouring as I set out, which was something, but it wasn't dry. The place where the Pennine Way crosses the A68 was back along by the church - I didn't really have time to go into the church itself, but it apparently had the only stained glass window in the country showing a narrow gauge railway, and how could I resist that.

The path climbed straight up through trees to a muddy track, and then on across a cleared area, and then through a strip of rocks - a good bit of height gained in this first stretch, but it took a while.

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Clambery rocks

Behind me there was a very hazy view down to the Catcleugh reservoir, which is probably the main landmark of the area, although not in view from Byrness.

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Catcleugh reservoir

I was really up in the hills now - a kind of gentle ridge, different shapes from all the moorland I'd walked over. It wasn't even too wet, either underfoot or in the air, and although it was hazy the hills definitely weren't right in the cloud, which was the thing I'd been worried about.

This first stretch was a climb up to the border - it felt a bit odd to be so close to Scotland, and I was quite looking forward to being back in it, although I would bounce in and out all day. But for the moment I had warning signs off to the right, and forest somewhere off to the left, and a string of little tops to pass over, and for a while the first flagged section under my feet.

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The first slabs

As I came up towards the border a brief ray of sunshine lit up the slope ahead of me - it was the only sunshine I'd see all day, but I didn't know that at the time, and it seemed kind of it to welcome me back. The border was a very soggy gate, and then I really was back in Scotland, although it didn't really look any different, except that the waymarkers had lost their colour coding.

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Crossing the border

There was less than a mile of Scotland this time, and then I was back over the border at Chew Green, above where the long road in from Alwinton ends. I'd been up here once before, with scdtigger, and we discovered that the road doesn't really end, because you can carry on by military roads to the A68, and they're in much better condition than the council road! But this time I was turning away from the road - and I had to get a move on, because it had taken me nearly three hours to cover not quite 6 miles, and I didn't exactly know how.

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Cheviots views

I made good time over the next mile or so, which made me feel better - I was on the line of the Roman Dere Street now, and there was a sign banning cars as it entered Scotland, which again felt more like home.

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Dere Street

So into Scotland, and out again, and in again, and some very solid looking clouds hanging about on the Scottish side of the border, above Hindhope, although in a way that looked better than the general grey, and it was dry for the moment.

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Scottish clouds

The next stretch was oddly flat and oddly confusing, as well as very wet underfoot and a bit dismal to look at. I knew I was getting closer to the hut at Yearning Saddle where I meant to stop for lunch, and for a little while it seemed like I was walking towards a hut on a little hill, but the path turned away from it. I was well away from the border fence and just following a trace of path, and after a while a waymarker would have been very welcome, but instead I got the next best thing, a line of flagstones.

The hut eventually turned up on the other side of the next little hill, tucked into a dip in the ridge - a bit dark and dingy inside, but with a little covered ledge outside which I sat on the edge of for a few minutes - I just got my lunch eaten before it finally started to pour, and kept going for the rest of the day.

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Yearning Saddle hut

I had just about time for the rest of the journey, but little to spare - 15 minutes to the top of Lamb Hill, which was fine, and another 30 to Beefstand Hill. It was a mix of mud and wet grass underfoot most of the time, and too much hurrying just meant my feet sliding from under me, which didn't help with speed.

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Lamb Hill

It was pouring steadily, too - it's fine, but it's not pleasant, and the broken cover kept slipping off my bag and flapping round me so that I had to stop and put it on again. Another 15 minutes or so should have brought me to Mozie Law, leaving an hour to be on Windy Gyle by 4, but now when I should have been following the fence I was led astray by a path which went contouring closer to the top of Carlscroft Hope, and had a slow and unpleasant trudge through rough heathery ground to get back on track, but behind time.

Another corner brought me to a crossroads with a path with a name - The Street, heading for the Coquet Valley in one direction and off into Scotland in the other. Windy Gyle was ahead of me now, but with its head in the clouds.

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Windy Gyle in the cloud

I walked on a bit towards it, and then something just snapped in my mind - I was soaked, the next day was forecast to be just as bad, I didn't know if I would be deeper in cloud heading up towards the Cheviot and I didn't know if I would manage to make up time or if I'd end up heading into the valley in the dark. If I'd come all the way from Edale it would have been worth pushing on, but if it had taken me ten years to get this far it could wait another 6 months for the spring.

There was no point dropping off on the English side, where I would only end up on the long lonely road through Barrowburn to Alwinton, but the Scottish side was better - still a long way from anywhere much, but I didn't mind walking as long as it was a bit more solid underfoot. Three miles or so would bring me to the road and another mile to a little place called Hownam, and then I could walk on to Morebattle or try to get hold of a local taxi to take me to Jedburgh or Kelso, and at least I'd be in familiar places.

The track led along by a fence at first, nice and clear - I'd meant to drop down where the map showed a path to the left to get onto a solid track quicker, but it would be quite a steep descent on sodden ground, and I decided I was better with the gentler descent over the hills which would take me right to Hownam.

But of course this was Scotland where nothing is signposted, and I came to a place where the track split into two more or less equal tracks, and there was no more fence to guide me. If I'd tried getting the map out for long enough to match up all the little hills it would have disintegrated, so I just had to take a quick look and an educated guess - there was nowhere nearby where the path bent to the right, so going left seemed more likely although the path was slightly less clear, and if I ended up too far to the left it would just take me down into the valley I wanted a bit sooner.

Before very long the path dropped quite suddenly to the head of a little valley, and I realised I must have guessed wrong, but there was a good track leading into the valley, which I thought must be one of the ones above Heatherhope, so I plodded on down. It seemed a long way, but somewhere way down the end I could see a vehicle moving backwards and forwards with a flashing light, which was a good omen for civilisation.

The end of the track curled round to the right, and that should have been the way I was heading, up a good broad glen, but it didn't feel quite right - it wasn't the direction where I'd seen the vehicle moving about, for one thing. It took me a minute or two longer to realise what was really wrong - the burn was flowing the wrong way.

There were huge empty buildings nearby, but round the other side of them were a couple of occupied houses, and I rang the bell of one, which turned out to be mostly full of dogs - the people were friendly, however, and told me that I was at a place called Calroust, which I found on the map to the right of the ridge which I knew I'd dropped off to the left.

I couldn't make any sense of that, and they couldn't figure out how I hadn't passed a house further up the valley, but they very kindly offered me a lift into Yetholm which was now the nearest village, since I was on the other side of the hill from the road to Howman and Morebattle - I got the feeling that they would really have felt bad about watching me go off in the pouring rain (they were worried that I wouldn't get to Yetholm before dark, which didn't bother me now I was on the road), so I accepted gratefully and ended up outside the Plough much sooner than I expected.

The man from Calroust had optimistically told me they were sure to have a bed for me, but it turned out that they didn't, however two men in the bar made the girl phone the Border Hotel for me rather than sending me out in the rain, and they could take me in. One of the men even offered me a lift down there, but this time I declined as I wasn't going to get any wetter walking half a mile down the road.

The Border gave me a luxurious room for about half price on the grounds that it wasn't my fault and it would be empty otherwise, and put my clothes in the drier and hung my waterproofs up to drip, and generally looked after me beautifully - I put the first installment of damp things from my bag onto the radiator and went to the bath before dinner, and started to feel warm again.

It felt a bit odd to be at the end of the Pennine Way without actually having finished it, but it was a good evening all the same.

The morning was still pretty wet, so I just went off on the bus to Kelso rather than waiting to climb a tiny hill, at which point it promptly dried up. But it still wasn't much of a day - there was nothing that I desperately wanted to do, so I wandered off to Jedburgh, which is my favourite Border abbey, and then to Galashiels to get the train home.

So a bit of an anticlimactic ending, but never mind. And I've realised while writing this that I don't actually have to go round by Byrness to get started again (although I might) - I can just walk up from Yetholm to pick up the ridge where I left it. So hopefully I really will be finished in the spring!

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nigheandonn


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Location: Edinburgh
Activity: Wanderer
Mountain: Eildon North Hill
Place: Tarbert Loch Fyne

Munros: 31
Tops: 5
Corbetts: 11
Fionas: 8
Donalds: 26+10
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Hewitts: 142
Sub 2000: 66
Islands: 36
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Statistics

2024

Trips: 22
Munros: 9
Corbetts: 1
Fionas: 1
Sub2000s: 6
Hewitts: 9

2023

Trips: 1

2020

Trips: 25
Sub2000s: 10
Wainwrights 1

2019

Trips: 45
Munros: 10
Corbetts: 2
Fionas: 1
Donalds: 9
Sub2000s: 19
Hewitts: 27
Wainwrights 39

2018

Trips: 44
Munros: 3
Fionas: 2
Donalds: 1
Sub2000s: 11
Hewitts: 13
Wainwrights 19

2017

Trips: 35
Munros: 1
Corbetts: 2
Fionas: 2
Sub2000s: 5
Hewitts: 17
Wainwrights 24

2016

Trips: 26
Munros: 1
Corbetts: 1
Donalds: 5
Hewitts: 16
Wainwrights 23

2015

Trips: 25
Munros: 2
Corbetts: 2
Fionas: 2
Donalds: 8
Sub2000s: 1
Hewitts: 17
Wainwrights 38

2014

Trips: 24
Munros: 2
Sub2000s: 3
Hewitts: 24
Wainwrights 40

2013

Trips: 19
Corbetts: 1
Sub2000s: 1
Hewitts: 10
Wainwrights 11

2012

Trips: 16
Distance: 90.5 km
Ascent: 395m
Fionas: 1
Donalds: 1
Sub2000s: 3
Hewitts: 8
Wainwrights 21

2011

Trips: 2

2000

Trips: 2


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