LEJOG day 46: Melrose to Selkirk

June 19, 2017

Land's End is, I trust you are all aware, the South-West-most tip of Cornwall and thus, by extension, the UK.

John O'Groats, or rather, Duncansby Head, is the North-East-most tip of Caithness and thus, by extension, the UK.

In general, a journey from Land's End to John O'Groats should, therefore, mostly go North-Easterly in direction. In the South, I usually managed that, or at least ended my day in a place at least either North or East of where I'd started.

Recently, there's been a lot of West in my walking, mainly thanks to the fact that the Pennine Way and my journey to it took me rather too far to the East. There's going to be even more West after Edinburgh because I'm crossing the country to Fort William to avoid the Cairngorms, which are beautiful but rather sparsely populated (despite what some guy in Bellingham tried to tell me, you cannot easily cross them without camping or a car).

Today, though, I have finished in a place distinctly both South and West of Melrose, so I have basically walked the wrong way. But I don't care because it was mostly very pretty.

This all came about because the youth hostel which used to lie on the Southern Uplands way between Melrose and Peebles is no longer there, and if you follow said long-distance path you have a very long day between the two which I didn't fancy. You can break at Galashiels, after a grand total of 5 miles, or follow the Way to Traquair and then walk along a B-road to Innerleithen, but by that point you'll have walked nearly 19-and-a-half miles, again, and the cheapest bed you'll find is at £75 for the night, and your walk the next day will be 8 miles along B-roads.

Instead, I walked in the wrong direction along the Borders Abbeys Way (which was as indirect as ever, at one point literally walking three sides of a quadrilateral) and am happily ensconced in the Glen Hotel in Selkirk drinking tea and having only walked 10 miles today, a perfect way to recover from 16 miles in the heat yesterday, and I got the chance to look around my second Borders Abbey before I set off.

Melrose Abbey is pretty! It has more roof but perhaps less wall than Jedburgh. Some parts of the audioguide were very, very similar, because there's only so much you can say about a ruined kitchen and everyone seems to feel it's important to mention that the monks/canons were vegetarian because they thought eating meat caused sinful thoughts.

The Borders Abbeys Way took me along some more of the Tweed, through some woodland and along a few roads, over some hills and through a few sheep-filled fields, which is quite a lot of variety for 10 miles. I opted out of the last 3 miles of farmland, choosing instead to walk along the road which ran parallel to the route and right past both the Sainsbury's and my hotel.

Tomorrow, I'll walk North. But still West. I can't help it.

Distance walked: 10.64 miles
Time taken: 3h34 (I didn't rush, I couldn't check in until 4pm)
Percentage completed: 64%
Miles per £1 of boot: 5.35
Days since I was last rained on: 6
Lunch: chicken and avocado sandwich - I branched out, I didn't like it, too mild- a pepperami and a bottle of very alarmingly pink fruit juice which had beetroot in it but tasted good
Last night's B&B: Braidwood House, Melrose: very nice room, good breakfast