Yorkshire Walks

It was a misty drizzly morning. We had a good breakfast and set off before 9am. Melrose was very quiet with few shops open so early. We began the climb onto the Eildon Hills up a long wooden staircase and then continued up a wet muddy path to the misty ridge between two peaks. Well we couldn't see anything more than 50m away, but the peaks did appear in the distance behind us later in the day.

Ruins of Melrose Abbey

Staircase at the start of the climb onto the Eildon Hills

The whole route turned out to be very well sign-posted so that the map was hardly needed to navigate, but it was still good to follow where we were on the map.

We walked down the south side of the Eildon Hills through some pretty beech woods still shrouded in mist but by the time we had passed through the village of Bowden to the Bowden Burn we had dropped down out of the cloud and slowly the weather began to improve.

Woods to the south of the Eildon Hills

Dead bush covered in lichen

The Bowden Burn was in spate and we followed it past Newton St. Boswells to its confluence with the Tweed. What an impressive river the Tweed was almost bursting its banks after all the rain and flowing at a tremendous speed for such a big river.

We sat on a seat at a view point overlooking the River Tweed for a drink and could now see the saddle between the two main peaks of the Eildon Hills that we had walked across, but there was still some low cloud lingering on their tops.

The Eildon Hills still with their tops in the cloud

The River Tweed in flood near St. Boswells

We continued to follow the Tweed for about 3km to Maxton and the raw power of the river in flood was quite impressive.

From Maxton we made our way across the fields to the route of the Roman road to York called Dere Street. We followed this dead straight route for about 5km until we were opposite the village of Ancrum where we had booked our B&B for the night. The B&B was about 1.5 km off the route in the centre of the village.

Lady Lillard's Stone - a monument to her bravery in battle in 1545

Dere Street stretching away into the distance

After a welcome bath at our B&B we went across the village green to the pub for a meal which turned out to be more entertaining than I had expected. There was a large party of young women celebrating a 21st birthday. They were all dressed in fishnet stockings, miniskirts and nurse or police uniform tops. My wife kept me under close supervision all evening.