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 […]
2023 Planning
It used to be that planning my walking itinerary for a year was a relatively quick and simple process – I only had one walk to think about, and the planning was normally all over and done with by Christmas, or New Year at the latest. Admittedly, I dragged out the planning – it’s something […]