Day 3 Jedburgh to Morebattle, 16 km

After last month in Portugal, where it rained every day for more than a week, I am never not going to bring all the rain things on a trip. So, on yet another spectacularly sunny spring day, I was carrying rain jacket and rain pants , a very very light rain skirt (that makes a great ground sheet ), waterproof gloves (that are almost impossible to get on if your hands are already wet), and an umbrella. I figure that carrying these currently unnecessary things makes me at least partly responsible for the very, very good weather.

Despite our best efforts to order a more modest breakfast this morning, we still ended up with way too much food. Fruit and yoghurt to start. And then “avocado toast” came with scrambled eggs (plural!) on toast with half an avocado on the side, along with sautéed mushrooms and some cooked cherry tomatoes. Fruit and yoghurt would have been fine. it is hard to say no to breakfast when you have already paid for it, but, really, it does slow us (weigh us) down!

On the way out of the dining room, we talked for a minute with a man who was there on his own, clearly a walker. He is on day 12 of what will be a 100 day walk that he has been planning for two years. He started in Fort William and is walking back home to Germany. Epic!

We loved the B&B and certainly did not speed out of our room. We left, again, a little after 9 o’clock. The first ladies of the day were twins (we thought) who told us the correct pronunciation of Yetholm — yetum — where we go tomorrow.

The morning started with us retracing a bit of the route we walked yesterday, through the suburbs of Jedburgh onto a small - but busy at 9 am - country road. Then we veered off onto another long distance route called the Borders Abbeys Way, which took us past more of the ancient trees and fields of sheep until we regained the St Cuthbert’s Way.

Then an easy walk, with a couple of big hills, through woods and along the edges of fields. Huge agricultural fields. Big agricultural equipment. Lots of barley doing its wave thing in the wind. Cows and calves. Many many flowers. We stopped twice - once on a bench by a river and once on the grass beside a crumbling castle — ancestral seat of the Kers.

We didn’t see many people today. A couple passed us when we were sitting on the bench, and we saw two women whom we had met in St Boswell’s. It seems like most people were going all the way to Yetholm today. We were very happy to be stopping earlier. The village we are staying in, Morebattle, is super small with not many places to stay. But, if we had all been here on Saturday this week, we could have stayed in the reopening local hotel, which has been bought and will be operated by the community. Very cool. There is also a fantastic community shop in the village. Open every single day. Run by paid managers, but staffed by volunteers.

We are staying in an exceptional Airbnb. It is a flat at the back of someone’s house, at the bottom of a lane, beside a creek. The owner and her son are upstairs. Incredible view, very quiet, and we are hoping there will be good stars. It’s 9:20 and still not even close to getting dark yet.

Tomorrow we can dawdle even more in the morning because we only have 11 km to go, and we can’t really go to the place where we will be staying before 2 PM. Very big hill on route, and I think we stay up high for the whole time.

Such a great way to spend a day!Читать далее