Scotland mostly - through nsl4u

The Southern Upland Way is a mega long distance trail at 212 miles form Portpatrick on the West coast to Cockburnspath on the East, I think only bettered on distance by the Pennine Way.

An inspirational friend of mine and of loads of other outdoor folks (especially hill runners) Dermot McGonigle has led the way over many years to challenges both here at home and abroad.

Accordingly Dermot, Des, John, Wes and Paul (who had come over from N Ireland) started it all off on Sunday evening, gathering at Portpatrick with all the personal gear and mountain biking stuff for the week ahead.

The guys will maybe help fill in the 3 early stages P’pat. to Bargrennan and then B’ennan to Sanquar and then Sanq. to Moffat. Dermo is a meticulous planner and has all the schedule and maps to hand, but it was something like 30-35 miles per day, over pretty tough terrain, of mixed ‘quality’ and some bits great, others not so inspiring.

I cycled down from Larkhall on the Wednesday afternoon and with backpack and tail pack of some 20 kgs - did quite well to cover 35 miles in 2 ½ hours on road (parallel to the M74 and a lot of it pretty good and decent apart form the M74 road-noise occasionally; the last bit from crossing the motorway onto the B799 (to the A701) was really nice though tough climbing on weakening legs – the good though, is there was about 3 miles or more downhill into Moffat!

The weather was great and had been all the first 4 days so things were looking good.

Firstly I met Wes (bike washing) and then the others joined within the hour. Wes was using the car to leap-frog, and so this was the routine all week …driver to end point of the day and cycling back in some of the route to meet the guys coming forward usually – it worked incredibly well as load lugging was a boon to light biking over the trails.

The compromise is always between having the right gear for anything the weather might throw at you and all of us ‘played safe’ and probably had too much in retrospect given the wonderful week it turned out to be. You’ll see the open country that was covered and in bad weather a seriously different prospect altogether –the staging points of some 30+ miles make each leg for us tough work……

On this report I’ll do it in the 3 stages I joined the guys for –

Moffat to Peebles (I joined) ; Peebles to Lauder (Nathalie and Keith joined, though Nat ran about 13 miles of it and met us in Galashiels); Lauder to Dunbar (the 6 of us men – (Nat off south on work), …Dunbar and not Co’path, explained later) and the photos cover each of these quite well though I do have ‘hundreds more’ (a failing of mine!).

The guest house in Moffat was brilliant and we had wonderful service and true welcome with a smile – just perfect.

We usually got going about 10a.m. and aimed for several hours to get through each journey before taking advantage of pit stops for grub and a bit of respite; it was ‘weather to hang about in’ and though the climbs were tough enough, often we managed to get some air and the breeze was superbly refreshing. The whole trip was excellent though the first forest bit was hard work as I was not used to the wet lumpy stones (I’m doing far more road cycling than off-road) and hadn’t decent balance to be able to rock and grunt over them – this soon relented and we got onto typical gravelly, grassy hill track and trail. Going into the big, wild open country was excellent and the views were stunning.

We stopped at Loch o' the Lowes café next to James Hogg’s (The Ettrick Shepherd) monument.

The next leg was by a ‘12 wheel rolling train’ down the road to the Gordon Arms for a wee refreshment....and honest, due to a lingering ‘head’ from Moffat, mine was orange and water – it helped a bit!

Over the hills to Peebles via (Innerleithen) Traquair House (longest continuously inhabited stately house in Scotland, where the famous gates are locked and will never be opened again until a Scottish kiing sits on the throne.....). We had a tea break whilst waiting on ‘Kate wi the key’ and Keith to arrive at Pete and Elslpeth’s place (very kindly turned over to us smelly, bedraggled lot in their absence!). Nathalie also hooked up with us there and a good evening was had by all.

Key points – John had a loose chain link; Wes got ‘out of the groove’ and shortly after (about 50m from the service stop, hit a muddy hole, broadside on...!); the refreshing clean splash in a burn; Dermo being told that... ‘that’s not the point’ at Traquair......by I think Mrs Doubtfire (but she was gracious and a nice lady!!); Paul won the ‘’30s’’ race into Peebles by some good 10 metres, though there was a bit of swapping on the last mile in.

<<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>> <<...>>

Labels: Moffat to Peebles, Southern Upland Way

# posted by Denis Bell @ 9/10/2007 01:37:00 pm 0 Comments