Wisp Hill and Pikethaw Hill

Wisp Hill (NY386993, 595m) and Pikethaw Hill (NY369978, 564m)

At 6.30 this morning I sprang out of bed, almost in the manner of a scalded cat, when I realised that it wasn't raining and didn't seem overly windy. Alas, by the time we were breakfasted and back opposite the old Mosspaul Hotel, conditions had deteriorated.

The combination of Mick watching the rain blow horizontally past Bertie's windows, his observations of 'it looks awful out there', combined with his not making a move towards waterproofing himself, gave me the first hints that he was having second thoughts about coming with me. It was a sensible decision to stay behind; no point having two sets of wet stuff to need to get dry in a confined space.

Off and up I went, with the rain blowing full in my face. The going involved a mix of useful sheep trods and yomping across the rough stuff.

I'm not sure what else I can say about my ascent. I'm certainly glad I got to see the loveliness of this area yesterday, as it wasn't something I could appreciate today. Before the top, low cloud had been added to the rain and headwind, so it was wet and hard work without any rewards. A good time to remind myself again that I have the privilege of choosing my suffering, and having chosen to go up hills in full knowledge of the weather forecast, I had no right to moan.

The top of Wisp Hill was reached more quickly than expected, and the descent down to Ewes Doors (another cracking name), which lies between Wisp Hill and my second objective, was also speedy, being downhill and with a fence to follow.

From Ewes Doors, Pikethaw Hill looked rather steep, and I found myself often standing contemplating what lay before me, rather than getting on with it - even though I was blessed with being out of the wind for a while here. Accordingly, it was a slow ascent.

I was very pleased when the top of Pikethaw Hill came into view

I had asked Mick to meet me in a layby a mile and a half down the A7 from my start point and as I sheltered in the lee of the large cairn at the top I gave him my ETA. The spanner in the works was that he found that layby to be closed and he had to go another mile down the road to find somewhere to turn. Had I been 15 yards ahead of myself, that would have worked out nicely, as that’s how far I was from the road when Mick sailed past (from the wrong direction) without noticing me, meaning I didn't get to avoid a road walk.


I would have been 15 yards ahead of myself if I hadn't paused to snap there - just two interesting machines in a farmyard stuffed full of various types of relics

A gap in the cones allowed him to squeeze into the closed layby from a southerly approach, and that's where I arrived, fairly well dripping, a few minutes later (and only 2 minutes off my ETA).

The outing had come in at 5.2 miles with around 570m of ascent.

Rubers Law and Ellson Fell

There were no hills yesterday. Waking up to find Bertie taking a battering from the wind, it wasn't a hard decision to extend our stay on Melrose campsite and to do a bit of culture, in the shape of Melrose Abbey. This morning was much calmer, so off we headed for our next hill:

Rubers Law (NT580155, 424m)
The popular way to do this one seems to be a quick raid from West Lees to the east of the hill. It seemed an unnecessary detour for us to get there, so we started from a residential street in the village of Denholm instead (to the NNW). I figured that the worst case would be having to walk around the hill to the West Lees side, but I also thought, based on the 1:25k map, that we should be able to get up semi-directly from Denholm.

Plan A didn't go entirely well. I'd hoped to follow the track I've marked in purple on the snippet below, followed by the track I've marked in blue.

The purple bit went fine, but either the blue one doesn't exist anymore, or the start of it is so overgrown that we just couldn't find it. We didn't resort to backtracking all the way to the Border Abbey Way (the green diamonds), but rather implemented Plan C, which saw us cut through the woods, stumble upon this...

The wooden hut behind the metal roof structure houses a composting toilet on one side and a sink on the other
...and find a gate, at the location marked with a flag on the map snippet above.

We foundered again after cutting across the field we had just entered, but mainly because we got distracted by a vehicle track we hoped might be heading our way (it dead-ended at another of those metal roof/composting toilet structures). Another tiny backtrack had us onto my originally intended course, from where things went incredibly smoothly, as we picked up a trodden line leading the whole way to the top of this prominent hill fort.


onto open ground, following a good trod

another fine summit

We made less of a meal of getting back down to Bertie, knocking half a mile off our outward route, bringing the whole outing in at 5.4 miles with around 340m of ascent.

Ellson Fell (NY410985, 537m)
The wind was forecast to pick up again this afternoon, but I thought that my chosen route for Ellson Fell would be sheltered, so off we tootled to park in the layby opposite the Mosspaul Hotel (or, by appearances, ex-hotel).

Glancing up at the way I had chosen to go, I uttered an 'urgh', as it looked like it was going to be awfully rough and hard going. A few moments later Mick declared his intention of choosing his book (he's on the third of the Aubrey-Maturin tales now, Conrad) over the walk.

I can fully understand why he chooses not to join me on the Marilyns which look unduly rough or uninteresting, but on this occasion the initial impression was very deceptive and it proved not only to be very straightforward (if a touch steep on the final pull to the top), but also one of the best hills of the trip so far.

Sheep trods along the crystal clear Mosspaul Burn took me very gently upwards, and my expectation was that I would have to go out of my way to go around the end of the forest before heading back towards my objective. I was, of course, keeping my eye out for a break in the forest, even though the 1.25k map didn't show any in the right place, and I was rewarded. As the burn split, the branch that headed directly up through the forest was accompanied by a break so wide and straight that I could clearly see that it went the whole way to the top of the trees.


it was obviously the day for finding unexpected structures in forests

It was steep, and slippery in places, but it did the job nicely, and with far less effort than expected I was on the top of the fell within 50 minutes of setting out.

It was a fine place to be. In fact, as I took this panoramic shot just before I reached the top (taking advantage of still being out of the wind at that point)...

... I marvelled that all I could see was lumps and bumps spreading out around me. The only manmade features within my sights were the forest and a cairn atop Carlin Tooth.


A splendid place to be! On a less windy day I would have fancied walking the whole ridge.

Retracing my steps, I got back to Bertie having covered 2.8 miles with something like 320m of ascent.

Even with the wind whipping up the road, I was tempted to take advantage of the fine skies and go straight back out for the two Marilyns on the other side of the road. There probably was enough daylight remaining, but the end I decided against, knowing that if the weather is as forecast tomorrow (i.e. wet and windy) then it'll either be a miserable outing, or they'll get left for another trip.

Meigle Hill, Eildon Mid Hill and Black Hill

I have a reputation for living my life by spreadsheets, but I’m not always that technical. My key planning tools for Marilyn bagging are an old road atlas and a notebook. On the road atlas, I note the approximate locations of the hills in which I’m interested and assign them a number (with a general rule that if I mark Marilyns on one page of the atlas, then I have to mark all the relevant hills on that page):Then in the notebook I list the hills on that page and make short notes as to how I might approach them:

very much scrawled on this example, not in my bestest writing

I can therefore see at a glance what hills are in a particular area (far more clearly than trying to navigate the Relative Hills of Britain (RHoB) book), and can record any research I do on those hills, even if I don’t get around to visiting them until a future trip.

It wasn’t until we were parked up last night and I was looking for yesterday’s hill in the RHoB book that I realised that I had gone against my general principle of marking none or all of the hills on any individual page of the road atlas, and was thus surprised to find that there was a Marilyn right by where we were parked (plus a couple more nearby).

A perusal of the map suggested that to ascend from where we were parked was not going to be the easiest option (too many field boundaries), so this morning we relocated ourselves to Clovenford, to visit:

Meigle Hill (NT466360; 423m)

“Are you doing the Marilyn?” asked the farmer tending a shed of sheep, as we passed through his farmyard at the start of this outing. A remarkable question, as usually when Marilyns are mentioned in the context of hill classifications, a blank look is received in return.

This isn’t the prettiest hill summit…

…but as one might guess from all of that infrastructure up there, there’s a track the whole way up, although, surprisingly, not a surfaced one.

The track made it a quick and easy bag, and just a bit over an hour after setting off, we were back, having walked 3.25 miles with around 260m of up.

Eildon Mid Hill (NT548323; 422m)

Like East Cairn Hill, which I visited on Friday, we have been in the immediate vicinity of the Eildon Hills at least twice before, if not three times, in the course of Big Walks. Perhaps it makes matters worse that the second time we opted to go over one of the hills and, because it was in our way, we chose the eastmost one. It’s the middle one which is the Marilyn, so today we returned to Melrose, abandoned Bertie in a public car park and toddled off.

Just below the ‘n’ of Dingleton Mains on the map above, a signpost told us to turn right. We opted to go straight on as there was clearly a trodden line that way and it looked a lot less muddy than the official route. Then we rounded a bend and found ourselves on the muddiest mudfest known to man, made worse by being on a very narrow path hemmed in by gorse. It was so bad that about half way along it I pondered out loud whether we had gone too far to turn back and go the other way. Mick opined that we had.

It would have been a miracle to have negotiated that path without either of us slipping over, and miracles weren’t with us today. As a result, one of us needs to have his trousers washed.

I’m not sure upon what I can blame the aberration which occurred at the col, when I was absolutely insistent that we were going up the hill to our left, whereas Mick was adamant that was the one we’d been up before, and it was the one to the right we were visiting today (I am always navigator on our joint outings, so, making matters worse, it was me with the map in my hand). He’s usually right in such cases and so he was again today. (I feel sure this aberration will never be forgotten, like my famous ‘there are two boxes next door and three just here, so that’s six’ incident at work many years ago.)

Anyway, we did make it up the right hill, from where the views were hazy, although the ‘wrong hill’ was close enough to be clear, just behind me in this shot:

And then we went back down again, ready for a late lunch before moving on to our final objective of the day. This one had come in at 3.3 miles with 350m of ascent.

Black Hill (NT585370; 314m)

What a lovely hill this one was, with a very pleasing summit! It’s a striking looking hill from a distance, but turned out to be quicker and easier than it looked.

This isn’t the striking view of it, but I didn’t snap it from the other side.

I’m always a fan of clear signage of the path through farms, and you couldn’t get much clearer than the plentiful signs on the initial parts of the route:

The signs disappeared once I was past the farm, but at the next gate my way was clear: straight up the side, which looked steep, but thanks to well-grazed grass and heather, proved to be easy. 

I think the Eildon Hills were behind me in this shot, but with the sun where it was, they’re bleached out

Mick opted not to join me on this one, as although the parking area was big enough for us not to block a gateway, leaving Bertie in a non-blocking position would have required leaving him in mud of an unknown depth. He didn’t have to wait for me for long as I was only gone for just over half an hour, with the outing coming in at just 1.3 miles with 180m of ascent.

Sell Moor Hill (NT480444, 424m)

 

Almost due north of this hill is a cattle grid on a B road, adjacent to which is a layby. That is where we ate a lavish* Sunday lunch before setting off for an unexciting bimble up this unremarkable hill.

A field of cows, a gap in a wall which was guarded effectively by a deep poor of slurry/mud/water...

...and a walk up another field took us to the top in just over 15 minutes. From there the extensive views told us that: a) there are a lot of wind turbines in these parts; and b) we were going to be lucky and dodge the shower we could see to the north.


The cows ignored us almost as much on our return leg as they had on the outward one, the feeder full of tasty hay being more interesting to them than two walkers.

A whole mile and three quarters had been walked with 90m of upness.

^{(*I may be exaggerating extensively as to the grandness of our lunch.)}