Day 92 – Coldstream to Horncliffe

A promising start to our 2017 walks. Storms Doris and Ewan have passed through, and things look set fair for the next couple of days. A potential hitch arises when Ben and Gary’s train to Berwick terminates at Newcastle because the line north has been closed due to somebody having been hit by a train near Alnmouth. However, the line has re-opened by the time John’s train arrives 40 minutes later, enabling Ben and Gary to join that train and the three of us to arrive in Berwick together and meet up with our pre-ordered Colin. It transpires that our accommodation this evening, The Castle, is immediately outside the station, so we make a minor diversion to leave most of our kit there before being driven to Coldstream. We’re dropped off outside the Collingwood Arms by a junction which John reckons will mark the finishing point of the missing section from Windy Gyle and Kirk Yetholm which we’re aiming to tick off in May. If it does, the Collingwood looks as though it will be a more than acceptable place to nestle whilst awaiting transportation. For now, we set off just before 1 o’clock and find our way down to the Tweed which we’re hoping to follow today as far as Paxton. All goes smoothly for the first 90 minutes or so. We then cross a viaduct over the River Till, a tributary of the Tweed, in order to rejoin the Tweed itself. At the top of a track which leads back to the river, we meet a couple of workmen who warn us that the bank path which slopes towards the river is extremely slippy and “quite treacherous” and that they have had to negotiate parts of it by edging along on hands and knees. Their description of the path proves to be accurate and, in the initial stages, Gary adopts the hands and knees technique (not without a degree of concern, nay panic, that he might slide into the water), Ben tries the slide along on the bum strategy, and John somehow manages to stay on his feet. This performance lasts a good 30 minutes after which the path, whilst still slippy, becomes less steeply sloped towards the river, and stability is increased by a couple of rudimentary walking poles fashioned by John from tree branches. Something which doesn’t markedly increase, however, is our pace which had dropped to a crawl and still doesn’t rise above a couple of miles an hour, but we are at least able to pay a bit more attention to the wonderful scenery of the Tweed and its fauna, to include a seal, a couple of deer and a flock of geese – or a skein when several of them fly in front of us. Our reduced pace makes it questionable whether we’ll now get to Paxton by sunset, and the prospect of trying to do so on a muddy path as darkness is falling makes us choose the more prudent option of finishing a couple of miles short of Paxton at Horncliffe, which has the added attraction of the Fishers Arms. We arrive there just after 5:45 to find that it doesn’t open until 6 but, almost immediately after we sit down to wait outside, the landlord opens the door and announces that he’d be happy for us to come in and to let us have a drink whilst he’s taking his pre-opening time shower. It would be churlish to refuse such hospitality….so we don’t. A Colin is summoned, picks us up at 6:15, and we’re at The Castle in Berwick by 6:30. And a very welcoming place it proves to be. The rooms are comfortable, the water is hot, and the food is not only substantial but also, along with the bottles of wine, very reasonably priced. After supper, it’s difficult to resist the attractions of the hotel bar to which we retire for just the one sticky and a cursory glance at the TV to see how the West Ham v Chelsea game is going. Predictably as it turns out; Chelsea win 2-1.