Southern Upland Way 2023 – Day 6
2nd August 2023: Longformacus to Cockburnspath – 18.5 miles Once again my watch told a different story to my head when it came to my sleep. I thought it had been OK, I’d used my earplugs to protect me from the noise of the bar downstairs and from one particular door that seemed to get […]
Southern Upland Way 2023 – Day 5
1st August 2023: Lauder to Longformacus – 15.0 miles I thought I slept pretty well last night, but my omniscient watch tells me I didn’t have enough REM. I’m not quite sure what the impact of this will be, but I feel fine, apart from a slight muscle twinge behind my left knee, which wasn’t […]
Southern Upland Way 2023 – Day 4
31st July 2023: Galashiels to Lauder – 16.0 miles Two things struck me at 4.30 this morning. Firstly, I’m amazed I get any sleep at all at home – I must be very lucky and there must be almost no ambient noise once I drop off, because I’m very rarely woken up dead early in […]
Southern Upland Way 2023 – Day 3
30th July 2023: Innerleithen to Galashiels – 15.0 miles I needed to use my ear plugs again last night. Not church bells this time, but random and very noisy pipes, which would click loudly for a couple of minutes every now and again. I knew for a fact that they’d either wake me, or keep […]
Southern Upland Way 2023 – Day 2
29th July 2023: Scabcleugh pickup to Innerleithen – 18.5 miles Even before starting the eastern section of this walk, I was of the opinion that the Southern Upland Way was the jewel of Scotland’s Great Trails. If I thought I had the mental stamina for 15 days away from home I would have quite happily […]
Southern Upland Way 2023 – Day 1
28th July 2023: Moffat to Scabcleugh pickup – 15.5 miles I didn’t think I slept much last night, although my watch says I got 8 hours, albeit quite interrupted. I woke at 2am and 4am and again at 5am. As I was watching a film on my tablet last night, I heard the dreaded toll […]
Southern Upland Way 2023 – Day 0
27th July 2023: Home to Cockburnspath to Moffat It’s probably worth taking a couple of paragraphs to put this walk in perspective. Today is 10 years 2 months and 29 days since I first set out from Portpatrick to begin the Southern Upland Way. I walked for eight days and finally gave up thanks to […]
Rob Roy Way – Day 6 (Part 2)
12th May 2023: Aberfeldy to Pitlochry – 9.5 miles It’s hard to start walking again once you’ve stopped for a while. I wasn’t sure if it was better that I’d stopped for 90 minutes, or worse! not only had my legs switched off, but my brain had too. It was quite firmly in ‘find food’ […]
Rob Roy Way – Day 6
12th May 2023: Acharn to Aberfeldy – 12.6 miles Apologies for being a little behind in posting these updates, as nice as the Old Mill in Acharn was, my room didn’t get the WiFi signal and I had very little mobile signal to speak of, so Day 5 was late. Other events overtook me, of […]
Rob Roy Way – Day 5
11th May 2023: Killin to Acharn – 17.1 miles I think I now have a full blown head cold. I started sneezing on the way back to town on the bus yesterday, I’ve got a constantly runny nose, sore throat and this morning I awoke with a cracking headache. I awoke at 4:30 too, but […]