Day Thirty Eight

Wednesday 21 July – Moffat to Abington.

Although I was still on a nodding acquaintanceship with the Annandale Way, today’s walk mostly came out of a book – perhaps that should be the book. Scottish Hill Tracks is the bible for those seeking these often elusive paths, many of them ancient transport routes, through the passes and across the high places. It is a book of measured tones. Paths are not “bigged up”, merely described in detail. If a mild warning is given, take note. Describing the “postie’s path” between Strathcanaird and Achiltibuie, it remarks “the path… crosses a steep grassy slope above sea-cliffs with a few metres of scrambling down a rocky step. Great care is needed at this point.” I did it the other way, with the scrambling bit being uphill, and it was daunting. Doing it the way described, looking straight down to the sea as you negotiate the step, must be terrifying.

There were no such strictures in the description of today’s walk. The basis for the route is an old Roman road which is shown on the OS map over many miles. First I walked up the Old Edinburgh Road, made redundant as a through route by the A701, just across the valley, and the motorway a couple of miles away. The road petered out in a farmyard, and I failed to find the path.

A friendly chap who was clearing bracken by hand because “it’s too wet to do anything else on the farm“ (!) put me right. He blamed the coming of the Annandale Way signs for confusing people, and it’s true that the Way is particularly intricate round here, outward and return legs of the loop which ends it being very close to each other. The loop is around the Devil’s Beef Tub, a 500-feet deep hollow formerly used by border reivers to hide stolen cattle. I wasn’t actually trying to follow the Way or its signs, but I cravenly let it take the blame for me getting lost.

I reached the crossing point on the A701 without any further alarums. But then things went seriously pear-shaped again. July is a bad month for finding a little-walked path. Tall, scrubby grass can render it invisible, where it might be quite easy to spot in the other seasons of the year. I got a grid reference from my phone, walked in the direction I thought was right, and failed to find the path. A cliché-straight ex-Roman road should have stuck out like the proverbial, but I was in a forest, with forestry tracks going in all directions, and this didn’t help matters. Neither did the fact, which became obvious later, that the grid reference given by the phone was enough “out” to thow me off track.

Eventually I spotted the path, heading Northwest through the trees. Eventually it did turn, the Romans having sensibly decided to contour round Errickstane Hill rather than charge over the top. A well-made forestry track ran parallel with the rather soggy route of the old road, so I walked the track. This was another seriously commercial forestry operation. Blocks of trees had been felled, other blocks replanted, and the tracks were in very good condition.

I had just got my feet wet wading through a ford (bloated by recent rainfall), when I passed a notice telling me that there was no access ahead due to construction works. The chances of me choosing to tackle the ford again were nil, so I pressed on. No work was going on, but the result of recent labours was obvious – an uprated track built, I guess, on principles the Romans would have recognised.

Clearing the forest, I continued to follow the Roman road, here a grassy path. To my left, the motorway and main railway line were now nearby, just across what I later realised was the upper Clyde valley. After I passed the site of a Roman encampment, I was expecting to follow a farm track, but it has become a road servicing the construction of the Clyde Wind Farm. Soon the motorway was just a drystone wall away.

The service road ended at the former A74, and it was maypole time again, the railway joining us for another round of plaiting (the girls had sensibly not turned up again, despite a few patches of blue sky appearing through the cloud). I had my first sight of the Clyde, just before I walked through Crawford, which was very uninteresting. Only a heavily-fortified corner shop had anything to detain me. Then followed an idyllic interval.

I had a quick look at the ruins of Crawford Castle, dating from the 12th Century, but on the site of previous fortifications including a Roman fort (they do keep muscling their way into this walk). Then I took an unfenced lane Northwest through a stunning landscape – stunning, that is, as long as I looked right towards some seriously pretty hills dotted with sheep, the whole enhanced by increasing amounts of sunshine. And to the left, the railway line, not pretty in itself, but not offensive, and having the added merit of masking the motorway.

Crossing the railway and then the river, I entered Abington, and immediately left it again. I was to spend the night a mile beyond the village, at Abington motorway services. I know how to live!