GT Day 16: A Splosh in the Rain

Tuesday 11 November 2014

Although I didn’t actually have to be home until Thursday morning, my planned outings for Tuesday and Wednesday were put on the back-burner, for another trip, when I saw the forecast for those days. I decided to finish my trip on a high, after Monday’s excellent outing – except that it was too late for someone with night-vision (and an ability to sleep) like mine to drive home straight after that outing, so I stuck around in the Moffat area for one more night.

I know that it rained in the early hours, but by the time I got up it was dry, reasonably bright (for an overcast day) and without any hint of the predicted strong winds, so I thought I may as well stretch my legs before hitting the motorway.

Given that I had kipped within three paces of the Southern Upland Way, it was the obvious place to walk, even though no obvious short circular route jumped out at me, and even though it looked less-than-inspiring on the map. My plan was simply that I would walk either for an hour, or until it rained, and then turn back.

As it turned out, the surroundings weren’t quite as uninspiring as the map suggested, but it was most certainly wet underfoot. I rued having put on clean and dry boots and socks when, after sploshing through a section into which I sank only a couple of inches, I suddenly plunged into some muddy bogginess up to mid-calf.

Yep, that’s where my one foot went in. Careless!

Three quarters of an hour in, just as the path was doing a jolly good impression of a muddy stream, it started to rain, and after giving it a few minutes to see if it was going to pass, I decided that I couldn’t be doing with water from both directions, so back I turned.

I managed 4.6 miles in total .. and then spent the rest of the day driving.