Walking the Watershed

1: Below the Belt (11th - 22nd April)

Thursday 16th April

From darkness into light. Chill air tells of a change in the weather even before eyes open to see blue sky through the window. An immediate resolve comes over me: to cross the hills today whatever the state of my feet. Better pain in the sun than pain in the rain.

I have slept late - nearly till nine - yet potter about, making breakfast, sweeping the bothy, before moving out into sunlight for pedicure. Ancient bandages unearthed from the rucksack allow a cats-cradle of crepe to be rigged for each foot, and walking becomes tolerable once more. The main problem today is to be bruised toes caused by excessive padding!

The number of lambs beside the track seems to have increased: overnight births, or simply the freshness of morning playing tricks? Certainly awareness and appreciation of my surroundings increases a hundredfold. Whereas the previous day had, like me, dragged its feet, today is already running and leaping, enlivening with every step.

I gain the pass in twenty-five minutes, the same time required for Capel Fell - at 678m the day's highest hill. It gives a fine panorama, both nearby - low morning light emphasising gullies on Croft Head - and slightly further afield, with Hart Fell and White Coomb, north of the Moffat Water, snow-edged and incised deeply by a series of classical U-shaped glacial trenches. All day this view reminds of the Cairngorms: steep-sided glens shoring up extensive areas of plateau.

These are tomorrow's hills however: for now I turn northeastward, following a dyke to a boggy col where the path from Bodesbeck crosses. I meet an old-timer en route to visit a friend down the Ettrick, having already reversed much of my own day's trek - but who claims to be too old for walking!

Bodesbeck Law - first cairned top of the day - proves another fine viewpoint, the wooded side of Carrifran Gans rising abruptly across the deep defile to the north. East of here the ridge straightens, each top shielding from sight the ones beyond. The sun is warm enough to warrant a T-shirt. Shorts would be comfortable too, but I decide against disturbing the intricate webbing around my feet: if it ain't broke, don't mend it.

After Andrewhinney Hill and Herman Law, the ridge broadens and leaves the 600m contour for good. Whereas the Southern Upland Way sneaks through hereabouts prior to St Mary's Loch and the Tweed at Traquair, my route jack-knifes back westward, descending grassy slopes beside a small gorge to reach the road at Birkhill.

[page 36]

Time was when this cottage doubled as an inn - providing, as did Moss Paul, hard-earned refreshment for travellers crossing what could, in adverse conditions, seem quite a high pass. Although traversing this particular watershed the wrong way, so to speak, I also stop for food and drink - albeit only water and a bran bar. Such has been the interest provided by clear conditions, I have eaten nothing but raisins since leaving the bothy.

The pre-walk plan was to camp just below here, near the road. Now I sit for a rethink. Only four in the afternoon, weather ideal, feet recovering remarkably from the screaming pain of yesterday, fitness beginning to seep into legs. I decide to climb again, to make Loch Skeen home for the night.

Forty-five minutes bring Watch Knowe, named for the Covenanters who stood lookout for armies trooping up the long glens below. A skirmish in the 1680s resulted in four Covenanters being shot by Claverhouse's men near here. As my own presence isn't a matter of life or death, I'm able to study the landscape nearer to hand - a landscape dominated by Loch Skeen, backed by the broken east face of 822m White Coomb. The name is an outcrop of old Gaelic - a corruption of sgine, or knife, as in the better-known Sgurr na Sgine in Glen Shiel - and presumably derives from the shape of the loch. The whole area now comes under the aegis of the National Trust for Scotland, with a well-worn path leading to the loch from the Grey Mare's Tail car park.

Even so, I'm surprised to run into a large group of youths resting by the shore. From Motherwell, on a Duke of Edinburgh, they are exhausted but happy. Soon after leaving them I find a great campsite: small and gently sloping, but with a burn only yards away, screes plunging across the loch and hardly a ripple to break the surface of the water itself. I lie outside the tent, unwrap the feet, cook a leisurely meal. Happiness is.

The first week is nearly over. A crisis has been dealt with and I will reach Moffat next evening with time in hand. I feel for the first time to really be coming to terms with what I'm attempting. The walk is no longer something to be held at arm's length, to be objectively pondered over: rather, it is now close to me, close as the clothes I wear and starting to feel every bit as comfortable. Each day's rhythmical moving-on gradually impresses its steady, subconscious beat, such that night-stops, relaxation, looking ahead to new ground and back to that already covered, these are all as much part of the walk as the steady progression from A to B to C. Perhaps more than ever before, I feel profoundly satisfied with what I'm doing.

[page 37]

I wake in darkness as though shaken by an impatient hand. Instinctively I know the reason, and poke my head out to gaze up and around. Stars everywhere, the sky thick with stars. Well-known constellations familiar to city dwellers lost in the vast network of shapes, the sweeping arc of the Milky Way casting enough light for surrounding hillsides to be clearly visible. This clarity adds a crystalline quality: pinpoints of light sparkle as though turning in slow unison, reflecting brightness from a still greater source. From the depths of my mind a phrase from Joyce rises to the occasion: The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.

The return to sleep takes a long time: I'm too aware of the enormity outside reaching down to the minuteness of my tent. The prospect of access to such sights for the coming ten weeks brings unquantifiable excitement. Mine is a rewarding insomnia.