FLIRTING WITH SCOTLAND
Monday 19th September 2022
Whitley Pike to Lamb Hill Refuge Hut
My tent is dry when I get up early this morning, so I pack up and move on. Grouse are calling all around me. ‘Go back! Go back! Go back!’ they say… but they’ve been saying that since day two, and surely I’ve come too far now to go back. Besides, I don’t have to do what a grouse tells me to do. I’m a more-or-less fully-grown man and they’re not the boss of me.
The route climbs further into the grouse moor before dropping down through forestry plantation on an undulating dirt track. A flock of Crossbills flies over, identified by their distinctive flight calls. After nearly three hours, and about six miles, on this same track I arrive at Blakehopeburn car park. I have been walking in a semi-trance, with my mind switched off, and I can barely remember what I have been thinking about for the last two and a half hours. The car park has toilets where I’m hoping to get a wash and fill my water bottles, but they don’t have taps, only foam hand sanitizer. I stop for a rest and eat breakfast snacks at a picnic table.
Further on I get my bottles filled and throw away my accumulated rubbish at the Border Forest Holiday Park, which backs onto the trail and is accessible across a bridge. I hear a Dipper singing near here, which throws me for a while as it’s an unfamiliar song to me. Kielder Forest is supposed to be packed with Red Squirrels, but of course I don’t see any.
Tiny Byrness is the last settlement I pass through before Kirk Yetholm, but there’s nothing for me here. I have everything I need now. For the next two days I’m little more than a wild animal, and my habitat is the hills and moors.
Once through Byrness I climb slightly up and away from the road and stop for a long rest before tackling a steeper climb back into the hills. I’ve done nine miles before midday and I want to do a similar distance this afternoon. But first I find a mown grassy area, take off my boots and lay down on the grass. A couple of people come past and chat. One guy takes my photo, which amuses me. By 1pm it was time to move on into The Cheviots. I’m torn though: my Spanish half wants to stay here and have a siesta, but my Welsh half wants to get back in the hills amongst the sheep. Three Buzzards are circling high above the hillside, so maybe it’s time to move on.
It takes me 45 minutes to scramble up the steep hill out of Byrness village and up to the cairn on Byrness Hill. Fantastic views of The Cheviot Hills lie ahead. Back in the village below me the church bell starts to ring and I figure this could be for The Queen’s funeral, which is taking place today.
Once up on the ridge it’s an easy trail forward over gently undulating soft turf hills, with occasional slabs and duckboards across boggier areas. I reach Ravens Knowe, which means I have put in another three miles since Byrness. Every mile I walk today makes life easier on tomorrow’s final day, and the further I go now, the earlier I finish the PW. As long as I’m walking, I’m winning!
Scotland at last! One mile further, at 3.10pm, I cross the border for the first time. There’s nothing here to mark the border and I only know it from my guidebook. The trail won’t stay in Scotland though. It will flirt with the border, following its line and crossing back and forth twice today, and a third time tomorrow before finally committing and entering Scotland for the final push to Kirk Yetholm.
I stop for a rest at a wooden bridge over Chew Sike, just past the site of a Roman camp at Chew Green. I am now within the final 20 miles.
8.5 miles out of Byrness I arrive at the grandly named Yearning Saddle Lamb Hill Mountain Refuge Hut, at least grandly named for what is essentially a wooden shed. I was intending to walk a few more miles but the temptation to not have to put my tent up again is too much to resist. The hut is a shithole (“Crack den vibes”, as one wag has written in the hut’s logbook) but it’s my shithole. I’m the only person here, which is just as well as the hut is small and I smell quite bad by now. Haughtongreen Bothy is starting to seem quite luxurious right now.
There are benches just broad enough to not fall off during the night and I lay out my sleeping mat and bag. I eat and then, when it starts getting dark, I get in my sleeping bag and crack open a novel I’ve been carrying all this way but not had the time to start reading. I still have 17 miles to walk, but I can get off early tomorrow and my pack will be lighter than today. I’ve also been far stronger and fitter in the past two days than in the previous two weeks. It’s taken me a fortnight of walking the Pennine Way just to get fit enough to start walking the Pennine Way.
I sleep quite badly.
17.5 miles; 28 km; 10 hours
Vole Explosion 
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