Captain's Log

Berwick

It took 2.5 hours to travel by train along the east coast mainline to reach Berwick-upon-Tweed. I looked out of the carriage window and saw the landscape scoot by. I’d have to return this very same distance, by foot over the next 17 or so days. My journey would be along the spine of Britain, the Pennines. It seemed impossible. The only way to tackle such a problem was to split it into smaller bits. The train journey had given me the scale of the challenge, I just needed to tackle each issue as it arrived and get through them day by day. As I disembarked at Berwick’s railway station, I faced my first problem: getting some grub for lunch. 

Berwick had to have a Greggs and I sniffed out its location in the town’s market place. I bought some vaguely healthy looking items and sat on a bench to eat them. Almost immediately a fellow sat down next to me and started chatting. Apparently he’d been a groupie for rock bands in his former working life, but had now retired. He wanted to know where I was going with my large rucksack and I told him about the Pennine Way. He’d never actually walked it, but he’d completed the West Highland Way a few years ago. He had Type II diabetes which put him off attempting long walks.
‘I live quite close to the start of the Pennine Way. I would’ve given you a lift to Kirk Yetholm, but I’ve got to pick up my wife later this afternoon’ he told me. I thanked him for the offer of the lift he couldn’t make and went in search of the bus stop of the Number 67 that would take me to Kelso. 

Kelso

I was disappointed to find the location of Golden Square, hosting the bus stop for the Number 67 bus to Kelso, was neither golden nor square. The bus turned up on time though and I shared my double seat with my rucksack as we trundled off towards Kelso. The day was sunny and the drive through the rural landscape was quite pleasant. So much so, that I wondered about staying on this bus for the next 17 days and just pretend that I’d done the Pennine Way. There was the problem of photo documentary evidence I’d have to provide later on, but AI was getting very believable nowadays. We straddled the Scottish border and entered the town of Coldstream. There was definitely a Scottish feel to the place. It took an hour to reach Kelso from Berwick and I was a little sad to leave the bus and its fellow travellers. It dropped me off immediately opposite a Greggs and I took this as a sign from the Gods to enter the premises and order myself a coffee and an afternoon snack. After a short snack break I scanned the adjacent market place for taxis. If this town had such a fleet, I’d have expected them to be stationed here. There were none to be seen. No problem; I wanted to visit the Sainsburys on the outskirts of Kelso anyway in order to stock up on some essentials for the next few days. 

Kelso turned out to be a pretty town hosting the ruins of a 12th century abbey. I crossed the broad River Tweed using the road bridge and headed south on a 10 minute walk to the large Sainsburys. It didn’t take long to get what I needed. The supermarket had a very large notice board that was well utilised and I scanned it for taxi adverts. There were none, which seemed a bit unusual. I asked a Sainsbury lady whether she knew the number of a taxi firm that did pick-ups from here. Her face suggested that I’d asked her where the local space launch service was to Mars. There was nothing for it, but to Google it. I rang the local taxi firm. After ringing for a couple of minutes, a woman picked up the phone. I said that I wanted a taxi from Kelso’s Sainsburys to Kirk Yetholm. There was an extraordinarily long silence and then she said that they could do it, but that they couldn’t pick me up for another couple of hours. It was already 2pm and I didn’t want to hang about. I looked for another taxi firm, but they were based in Galashiels, over 10 miles away. That might turn out expensive. I looked at my OS map and saw that Kirk Yetholm looked just over 7 miles away. I could probably walk that in 2-3 hours. It would save twiddling my thumbs in Kelso. I set off along the B6352 towards Kirk Yetholm. 

Preamble To Kirk Yetholm

After half of a mile or so, I wondered whether I’d made the right decision. The road was busier than I thought it would be, although there was enough verge to step off the road when traffic approached. After a mile, the road split and I lost at least half of the traffic to the B6396 on its way to Wooler. I still had to make avoidance manoeuvres for approaching vehicles, but it was less frequent and more manageable. I actually started enjoying the walk, as far as road walking can be enjoyable. I walked through a rural landscape. Only slowly did the road become hillier and the outlying Cheviots appear on the horizon. Outside Blakelaw Farm  I found a model of a man in spiderman suit holding a sports rattle. One foot was on a rugby ball and he was standing in front of a set of rugby posts. Later investigations revealed that this was probably dedicated to the late Jock Todd who was a player and almost everything else at Kelso Rugby Club during a 50 year tenure as a member. I couldn’t find out what the Spiderman suit was about, but a possibility was that it was a Harlequin's costume in reference to the club's nickname.

I made fast progress along the road and I felt I was getting one or two hotspots on my feet due to the hard tarmac. Maybe the road walk hadn’t been such a good idea. It did only take 2.5 hours to cover the distance though and I was relieved to reach the village of Town Yetholm, a neighbour of Kirk Yetholm. I went in search of food and found a Deli of all things. I bought some goodies and sat at one of the town’s patio tables to consume them. There was a large boulder deposited on the village green. A plaque said:
‘This memorial reminds us of the gypsy tribe who inhabited this village from the 17th century onwards. Their customs and traditions influenced many aspects of village life.' It didn’t make completely clear why a large boulder would remind people of the ‘gypsy tribe.’ I pondered this as I walked along the road connecting the two Yetholms.

Kirk Yetholm

The start of the Pennine Way from Kirk Yetholm is low key. Very low key. You get a Pennine Way fingerpost pointing southwards and half an information board describing the route (the other half was dedicated to St Cuthbert’s Way; the trails intersect at Kirk Yetholm). NoBo (North Bound)  Pennine Way finishers can still apparently get a free half pint of beer at the nearby Borders Hotel. The tradition was started by Alfred Wainwright in 1968, but is now sponsored by the Hadrian Border Brewery. I did consider popping into the place for a pint, but it was already past 17:00 and I needed to progress along the trail to find some water and a wildcamp. The sky had already turned to a moody grey and I didn’t want to be walking in rain. I followed the direction of the first Pennine Way fingerpost and started my Venture along the Pennine Way. 

Uphill Start

I followed the steep slope of a single track road out of Kirk Yetholm. It felt like I’d never hauled a heavy rucksack before. I paused to make friends with a goat that had such a bizarre array of horns that I wondered whether some of them had just been stuck on. The height arduously gained was then immediately lost as I descended to the Halter Burn. I wondered about filtering some water from it, but it looked like it ran through some fields holding livestock further up the valley. I could also see that I had another steep climb ahead of me and so I decided to wait for better water prospects. The Pennine Way split into two options at this point: a low level route following the valley bottom and a high level one following the tops. I’d decided to follow the higher level option.  I left the tarmac and started heading up the grassy slopes of the Cheviot outliers. The day’s greyness disappeared and the sun made a welcome appearance. As I got higher, a stronger breeze developed too. Looking back northwards, I could see over a vast rural landscape. Climbing further, it became apparent that the the burns that I’d noted on my map for potential water sources wouldn’t actually deliver. This was slightly annoying since it would mean having to descend into one of the valleys to find a stream. It was getting windier though and so I decided that finding a water source and a sheltered wildcamp wouldn’t be such a bad deal afterall. In the end I decided to take the opportunity of a gate in the ridge line fence to descend about 100m to the Trowup Burn. 

Trowup Burn

I found bountiful running water in the burn and an adequate camp pitch to next to it. The location was secluded and so I was unlikely to be troubled by anybody. I’d dropped out of the sun though and it felt a lot cooler. I quickly filtered some water and pitched my tent. I managed to eat a meal before it got dark. It had been a long first day on the Pennine Way and had not turned out quite as I imagined, in terms of the road walk from Kelso. My planned schedule had me much higher up near the summit of The Cheviot. It’s important to be flexible on long treks though and not to be the slave of a schedule. That is the beauty of wildcamping. 

During the night I was awoken by long periods of heavy rain. Maybe tomorrow was going to be more challenging. There was nothing I could do about it though and so I drifted off back to sleep.