David's 2022 Walk - Lands'End to John o'Groats

What a great town in which to have a rest day!? A relaxing start - much later than planned The Tontine Hotel, as the plaque outside explains was built in 1808 and financed by the Tontine principle - "in which a group of people invest in a project, but lose their share on death, finally leaving one surviving investor who becomes the sole owner" - to me sounds it could be a perfect plot for Agatha Christie. Over breakfast I met the current owner Kate.... Kate described ownership as being more like being a custodian of the building so I hope she's not going to be bumped off too soon though she and her husband are already handing over the reins to their daughter. The story moves on!  After breakfast I went out on to the High Street to enjoy the Mediterranean sunshine and do some sketching. I met Chris and Ginny. Chris came up to Scotland to train as a Civil Engineer and decided to stay. He is now a sculptor. Ginny followed her heart from the US and was...

Innerleithen (480 feet) sits on the Tweed in a narrow steep sided valley. The hills are inviting and the town has become a hub for walkers and cyclists - the main street is lined with bike hire and repair shops. Over breakfast I met Richard who is walking from Aberdeen to his home in London in 6 weeks and doing a big mileage per day. He works for BP, is visiting as many independent BP outlets as he can along the way and is collecting for Alzheimers Research. Because of shortage of time, he's been walking as straight a line as possible and keeping to the roads.  Not for me!! I wanted to visit Traquaire - the oldest inhabited house in Scotland. We've enjoyed a number of family parties here over the years.. - especially Dick's 70th and most memorably and unforgettably  Emma and Dave's wedding. I went to check on the health of their tree that they'd planted on their wedding day - it was flourishing! The Bear gates at the end of the drive were l...

Over breakfast I met Nadia and Simon. Originally from Zurich, they now live in Cardiff. They had just completed walking the Border Abbeys Way. Nadia is a pianist and composer and studied music at Cardiff where she was inspired by Schoenberg and Janacek. How's that for a conversation over breakfast? With the repeated plugging and unplugging of my phone I think the jack socket has become worn, loose, temperamental or all theee - and has become choosy about what combination of cables and power banks it will accept. Otherwise, it loses its charge within less than an hour. This has become increasingly concerning particularly because I depend on my phone for all maps and navigation. Not only that, but I'd realised yesterday that my boots were making a different sound as I walked. Having looked at them properly this morning, I realised the heels on both boots had become loose. So, a day of housekeeping. Melrose had no remedies so I walked to Tweedbank and caught the train ...

After an enjoyable evening all I needed to do this morning is plot a route to Melrose. As with yesterday, the most obvious and most direct ( by miles) was to walk what I hoped would be quiet roads directly from Nenthorn. First some farewells,  Jill and Luke, Grace and Donald and of course the beautiful Grouse who seemed to know that I was off somewhere - she seemed to have taken quite a liking to my boots - or perhaps more likely, whatever I've been tramping through for the last 10 weeks! The most obvious route went straight from Jill and Donald's front door and no sooner had I set off that I met Chris from BT Openreach. He was carrying out a check on the condition of the telegraph pole - he told me this is something they have to do regularly on each of the 4.2 million poles across the country. As they are buried up to 6 feet in the ground, they can be prone to rotting. We got talking about the the ...

Total distance walked so far = 890.3 miles Total ascent so far = 107 229 feet With the prospect of a shorter walk today, I decided on a more relaxed start and after breakfast, enjoyed sitting outside The Plough in the morning sunshine. The shortest off-road footpath I could find didn't even lead to Kelso so I decided to walk on the road instead - probably not the best decision but at least it'd be over with quickly.  The attraction of walking is that it gives an opportunity to look and appreciate beauty in the  details. ..and sometimes the ugliness in other people's misfortune. Fortunately, there wasn't too much traffic and 7 miles later I arrived at the Tweed bridge leading past the abbey in to the centre of Kelso. Apparently the bridge at Kelso was used as a prototype for Waterloo Bridge designed by the same architect a decade later in 1811. When the Waterloo Bridge was eventually replaced over a hundred years later, two...