Thursday 2 May - Cademuir Hill & White Meldon

Cademuir Hill (NT241376; 416m)
I'd thought I would declare today as a rest day, as all of my hills around here required a drive and Bertie was nicely settled on a campsite. Then, as has happened a number of times on this trip, I looked at the map and thought: That's an easy ride away!

In fact, it was such an easy distance that I offered to walk it instead so that Mick could come along, but as I didn't think of that until we'd already gone to the trouble of emptying Bertie's boot to retrieve my bike, he declined and made himself busy with campsite chores whilst I pedalled off down the road.

I'd intended to tackle this hill from a car park on its south side, which seems to be the popular route, however, without the ease of a motor vehicle to get me there I decided on the spur of the moment to try entering via the car park to the NE. I knew that lots of new tracks and paths have been laid through this woodland, and it only covers a small area, so I guessed (rightly) that the waymarked trails would hit this car park too.

There was some dithering in the car park. A map displayed there showed the waymarked trails, but it showed even fewer tracks than on my 2011 map. That left me all a dither as to whether to follow one of the marked trails, or to use the tracks shown on my more up-to-date 1:25k maps in the hope of intercepting a waymarked trail further along. Then there was the dither as to whether, whichever option I chose, to continue by bike or to walk. Feeling like I was dithering so long that I could already have got half way to the top if I'd just made a prompt decision, I locked my bike to the leg of the map display and opted for the red trail. As you may notice from the recorded track shown on the map snippet below, this took me an indirect route:

It did, however, take me to the top (on such good paths that it would have been possible to cycle there), where a picnic bench has been installed amongst the detritus of tree harvesting. The harvested area may look messy, but at least there was a view, which wouldn't have been the case when the trees were standing.

After picking my way across the discarded branches, in search of the true high point, back down I went. As you may notice from my recorded track shown on the map snippet above, I took a more direct route - again entirely on path, but not entirely on ones shown on even my most recent map.

Back at Bertie a short while later, 2.4 miles had been walked, with 190m ascent, and 5.1 miles biked.

White Meldon (NT219428; 427m)
I had White Meldon down as half-mile (each way) quick bag from the parking area on the minor road to the west and thus it also wasn't on the agenda for today. Then, over lunch I looked at the map again, did a bit of measuring and suggested to Mick that as it was only a 2.5-mile walk away from Bertie's pitch, and as Mick was in need of a leg-stretch, we could nip out and visit it this afternoon. From its representation on the map it looks like a 'good hill' - the sort that Mick likes to visit.

I knew we'd walked the first part of the drove road out of Peebles before, and I thought that was on our LEJOG walk. Looking at the archives of the blog just now, it seems that we walked it on both LEJOG and K2CW. Bits of it did look familiar.

At the point where we veered west off the Cross Borders Drove Road route, I assumed that previously we had carried straight on. It was only as we looked down on this view...

 ...that I realised we had been here before too. I pointed out to Mick exactly where we had walked, recalled a cow with horrendous mastitis and recounted our onwards route, but he still didn't remember it.

In view of today's objective, we took a different line, passing through the farmland of Upper Kidston - a farm that doesn't major in having hinges on its gates and very partial to the extensive use of hairy twine (accordingly, we hopped over them all).

White Meldon was as good a hill as I expected it to be and from its summit I pointed out where I'd been this morning and a couple of other Marilyns nearby that are still unvisited.

Our return was a retracing of our steps (more or less), with occasional looks over our shoulders to see how the rain was progressing. The forecast had given a 50/50 chance of rain hitting us, but by good fortune the showers skirted us until about 60 seconds after we arrived back at the campsite (and even that was just the lightest of showers).

Five miles had been walked, with around 380m ascent.