Total miles: 17.4
Elevation gain: 1,699 ft
Time walking: 1pm – 7:30pm
Miles to date: 921.1
Oh dear, today was not a fun day! Poor Anneliese was up sick all night with what we think must have been food poisoning and was really not looking well this morning. Tough cookie that she is she was determined to try to walk and so we packed up gradually to give her a bit of time to recover. I managed to shorten the route slightly and we set off just after midday. She was so faint and lightheaded though that we quickly realised there was no way she could continue so we made the decision to return to the campsite after a mile, the plan being for Anneliese to get a taxi to our next stop. That meant that she could rest up for the afternoon but also she could take some of my heavier stuff so I could walk with a lighter bag for the afternoon. It felt pretty rubbish for both of us, illness aside, Anneliese felt bad for slowing me down and I felt bad for leaving her!
I was very grateful for the lighter bag as it meant I could cover ground much more quickly. It was heavenly! After walking with weight for so long I felt like I was practically floating along! A friendly farmer who had seen me earlier with Anneliese stopped to ask if everything was ok and when I explained what had happened he pointed me in the direction of a shortcut to cut back onto the St. Cuthbert’s Way without walking along the main road. The thing is in Scotland they don’t have public rights of way like we do in England – you have the “right to roam”, which is great but makes it a bit harder to know where suitable paths might be from looking at the map!
I managed to pick up St. Cuthbert’s Way fairly easily by cutting across down through some fields to the river and then crossed the gorgeous (and bouncy!) Monteviot chain suspension bridge and walked up through the wooded grounds. I had made good progress for the first four miles but felt like I was tiring quickly which was odd. I put it down to feeling worried about Anneliese and knowing I had lots more miles to go before I reached the campsite. It didn’t help that I missed a turning at one point and added half a mile to my trip. After a few miles of walking through rather brown woods the path joined Dere Street, the Roman road from York which I had first come across in the Cheviots at Chew Green. It looked on the map like it could be quite dull – dead straight for several miles and close to a main road, but it was actually quite pleasant. The path wound a little through a 10m wide strip of land between fields and was a mixture of grass, trees and woodland. Unfortunately early on the rain started to come down, the first rain I’ve had for a while and not long after that I started to realise I wasn’t feeling great. The cereal bar I had eaten wasn’t sitting very well and my tiredness turned into weariness, a very different thing! Dere Street suddenly started to feel very long…
I tried to keep the pace up though, just focusing on getting to the campsite. After Dere Street the path joins a road for a while and I checked the map to see if I could cut any more distance out. It looked like I could cut through on a couple of small roads to cut out a big loop of the river. It was a bit sad as I’m sure that is one of the best bits but I still had about 8 miles to go and was starting to flag. I still got to do a bit of riverside walking, some of which was a bit damp and slippery with ups and downs on rickety steps, some of which was pleasant and pretty right by the river, the Tweed. Dryburgh Abbey was on the other side but I didn’t get much of a view of it sadly. One for another day! My feet were soaking by this point and I made myself stop for a quick break on a bench to change my socks. I have new waterproof socks which are a tad on the small side bit at least they are dry. I hadn’t worn them today as my boots have dried out for the first time since the Pennine Way and it was rather novel to not be wearing waterproof socks for once! Still, this was definitely a time for them to go on, my feet were all white and wrinkly, uh oh! The dry socks felt amazing and I was so glad I’d stopped. I was feeling gradually worse and worse, feeling sick and my stomach was cramping. It was beginning to look like I had food poisoning as well, which made sense as we had shared food.
The last four miles were really tough. All I wanted to do was to get to the campsite and curl up in my tent. There were some pretty views of the surrounding countryside including one of the distinctive three peaks of the Eildon Hills. St. Cuthbert’s Way actually goes up over the saddle between the hills but to cut time I had switched to the Borders Abbey Way which took a flatter route! I finally arrived into Melrose feeling tired, sick, cold and wet and although it looked like a pretty town I made a beeline for the campsite. I found Anneliese and bless her she had put my tent up and sorted my sleeping mat and sleeping bag out. I literally just crawled in my tent, put dry clothes on, managed to drink a cup of herbal tea that Anneliese made for me, crawled into my sleeping bag and fell asleep, exhausted!
