St. Cuthbert's Way, Day One, Melrose to St. Boswells, 6 miles.
Melrose, 7pm. 11 hours after leaving Skye I was standing in the square on Buccleuch Street under scudding clouds that were buffing the sky to a clear blue. The sun had that highly polished look you get in early July, as if it's been stored away for the winter and now, released from storage it's rejeuvenated and blazing from a sky free of haze.
I'd been on the 6 hour bus journey from Skye to Glasgow, an hour across to Edinburgh on the train and then the two and a half hour bus to Melrose. It was a strange sort of set up for the bus. The front advertised Peebles with a scrolling digital sign saying 'onward to Galashiels and Melrose'. Why not just say Melrose on the front? Perhaps because Peebles was the bigger of the towns it visited. Anyway, I'd ended up as that awful creature, the boil in the bus walker. While we'd sat at Galashiels bus station it had streamed in the window, blinding and hot and as the signs for Melrose finally appeared we seemed to detour into every nook and cranny on the last three miles. Half of me wanted to get off the bus while the other half was envious of the public transport network down here. Finally we reached our destination and I sat in the car park and replaced sandals with Merrells. A quick phone to Dawn to say I'd arrived and all I wanted to do was walk.
I'd come up with a plan. The first night I'd camp up on the Eildon Hills above the town and the next day wander across to Harestanes and camp somewhere round there. I'm a very good planner. Very detailed plans, timings, distances, sites to camp. I'm also a very bad navigator in towns. On the hills and moors, dump me anywhere and I'll find my way around but in town? Not a chance! 'Walk east up High Street'. There is no east in a town. There is no west for that matter either. It's all buildings and street names so I'd taken the precaution of sneeking a preview on Google Maps and identified the likely steps you descend between the houses to start the walk. So that's what I did. I started the walk five minutes after leaving the double decker bus. Up the narrow street beside the abbey walls, across the roundabout and up the steep hill to the houses and down the already seen steps. A stiff climb up the wooden steps and I was in open countryside heading for the Eildons. Half an hour later I'd passed through fragrant gorse and grass and was standing on the bealach between North and Mid Eildon being buffetted by a late evening wind. Below, Melrose dimmed into the evening shadows and a patchwork of fields and hedgerows hazed to the horizon.
As I said, I'd come up with a plan to camp up here but after the long journey all I wanted to do was walk. So that's exactly what I did. After cooking up some noodles out of the wind I packed up and walked. And walked and walked some more. All the way to St. Boswells. You see, I normally make these plans in meticulous detail, well in advance and without fail, on the day, I bin them. What they really do is provide a framework to let me roam the route in my imagination long before I begin the walk but on the day I'll bin the plan to a greater or lesser degree. I'm always doing that. During this winter I'd managed to stuff my knee such that it was well and truly unusable but come February and it being able to bend again, I decided to walk up into the corrie on Blaven. Just for a look you understand. See how the knee gets on. Well I did walk up into the corrie and I knew exactly what was going to happen. Because it always happens. The plan went out the window and I climbed Great Gully, a Grade I winter climb I'd always wanted to do. For me, the plan has always been the forge in which the steel has been tempered. It's the butterfly's chrysalis. Come the day, the butterfly appears and the real adventure begins.
I walked down the path towards the trees, past softly fragrant whin and into the dead quiet of the forest. I spied a nice corner of a secluded field to pitch up for the night but I wasn't in the mood for stopping. It felt great to stride out under the cool evening sky and I wandered into another forest under the canopy of muted light and before I knew it I was over the fence and onto the fantastic meadow above Bowden. This verdant ground was a new one on me. Not the bleak asceticism of the northern highlands, rather a wild flower meadow fringed with silver birch. The grass was over two feet high in places, its light brown tops swaying in an imperceptible breeze on its long green stalks. A riot of blue and yellow broke up the green expanse and hither and thither, walkways had been mown among the commons. A sign politely asked walkers to use the mown paths and horse riders the rough. I was well and truly in the Borders. A beautiful cat sat on the edge of the rough and watched me make my way into the quiet village of Bowden. A nod to the evening with a local out walking her dog and I headed down the lane and took the left path through dense undergrowth that led me to the minor road into Newton St. Boswells. Some tourists were slowly meandering back into town. It all felt so cosmopolitan in the warm evening air. On I went, under the A68 flyover and down to the Tweed where the scent of wild garlic was almost overpowering. From the suspension bridge across to Dryburgh Abbey I looked longingly at greensward on the other side for the night but kept on into the gathering darkness along the river bank. The path undulated through the trees, sometime hard packed dirt, sometime wooden boardwalk and steps but all the while alive with birds settling in the for the night and the ever present aroma of wild garlic. Just before St. Boswells it was getting a bit too dark to see in the woods so with some relief I popped out onto the village green around 10pm. I asked a passing local out walking her dog if there were any spots for a tent nearby and she said folk sometimes camp down by the river, near the golf course. I know you can wild camp just about anywhere in Scotland but it's often worth being polite and asking now and then as you might uncover a hidden gem.
The simmer dim lent an ethereal quality to the light as I headed up the lane and steeply back down to the Tweed, now lined with Weeping Willow and the only birdlife still active were the ducks having a domestic on the water. Turning right at the golf course I followed the path to its far end and at around 10:30pm pitched the tarp near the end of the course. I was beginning to think I'd have been better with the hooped bivvy than the Trailstar as the tarp is enormous and there were few places along the river where I could have squeezed it in but here I had plenty of space near the course and anyway, I'd be up and gone long before anyone came to play a round. Not that I was blocking anything.
I was just settling down for the night when out of the gloom a lone walker appeared. He was a really nice local who was out for his three mile loop and most certainly wasn't a golfist. We chatted for a while about the outdoors and his plans to camp in the dunes on Lindisfarne and it turned out we both shared a common theme. I was looking for a change from mountains and was doing something about it, walking the way for a complete change of scenery. He was a bit tired of the Borders and was doing something about it, heading up to Skye to see the mountains. Seekers of change passing in the night. I detected the famous Borders freedom in the way he talked about wild camping and woebetide anyone who got in his way in the dunes!
As I settled into the sleeping bag with the tarp fully open the sounds of the river sent me off into sleep in a windless night. Not a flying insect to be felt. Not a midge nibbled at my exposed face. The only sounds were the occasional doppler approach of a duck flying low down the river. 'wack wack wack, WACK WACK, wack wack, wack' decreasing in volume as it faded into the calm night and was gone.
