Day 97 – Kirk Yetholm to Coldstream/Cornhill-on-Tweed

A very comfortable night followed by a full Scottish breakfast which has two advantages over its English counterpart, namely that baked beans are not an option, but haggis is. Today’s walk should be somewhat easier than yesterday’s. Certainly shorter at around 10 miles and over more forgiving terrain, and the only fly in the meteorological ointment is the possibility of light showers. Our destination is the Collingwood Arms – our departure point on day 92 – which we should reach well before Colin who has been booked to pick us up at 2:10. The only benefit of Gary’s walking pole which was noticeable yesterday was the stability which it afforded on one short descent over some shale on the ridge. However, an unexpected benefit soon emerges today. We’ve decided to take a route which loses a bit of border purity in the interests of avoiding some relatively major roads and, as we leave Kirk Yetholm, we enter a field in which there’s around a dozen head of black cattle – identified by our rural affairs correspondent as “ball-less bulls”. They seem reasonably docile and amble out of our way as we approach each small group of them. However, once we’ve passed the final couple, we realise that they’ve all gradually been regrouping and are now following very closely behind us. This doesn’t become too uncomfortable, but it’s slightly unnerving when we still have a couple of hundred yards to go to reach the far end of the field where we will need to exit through a gate without being followed by our bovine companions. The walking pole provides the solution. When we reach the gate, John turns and brandishes (or, more accurately, points) it at the bulls who back away sufficiently for us to leave the field on our own and shut the gate behind us. A short walk along a narrow road is a prelude to a few miles over rising and falling fields during which we experience a light shower and then warmer temperatures which eventually lead to the layer count being reduced to two. After emerging onto a country lane, we renew acquaintance with the border near Mindrum, cross a B road, and are back into England. The lanes which we follow take us north east (cutting a corner of the border) and we then join a railway embankment starting at a disused station at Sunilaws. From the logger and Ben’s OS map it looks as though, after a couple of miles, there will be few places where we can leave the embankment and get to the Collingwood. However, the first two of these prove to be bridges quite a long way above roads below, with no obvious paths downwards. We decide not to essay steep scramblage and, thankfully, the third option proves less problematic – a short incline and a three barred fence to reach a road bridge over the embankment. After another 5 minutes, we leave the road to join a narrow track through some woodland where a further use for the walking pole emerges – i.e. as a somewhat thin spade to unearth a plant so as to confirm (or otherwise) suspicions that it is wild garlic. Unfortunately, thin also means inefficient and slow which leads to John finally trying to pull out the plant by its stalks, and leaving the roots (and any probative garlic) under the soil. The woodland walk is only a quarter of a mile long, and soon brings us to a bridge and a road along which we can see, at a junction, the Collingwood Arms. The satisfaction of arriving exactly where we started on day 92 almost rivals that of seeing the rain start to fall as we go inside around 12:30. It’s a good 90 minutes until Colin arrives, so plenty of time for a couple of ciders and, so far as John and Gary are concerned, a bite to eat. Colin arrives slightly early, and we get to Berwick 20 and 40 minutes before the trains to Cheltenham and London respectively. The recently repaired station roof looks in good order but, according to Colin, there are still some problems, including some sections having been missed. Sounds as though the Castle will be getting some more custom from the roofing contractors in the near future. In the meantime, John allows himself 10 minutes to hobble over the bridge to the platform for his train, and Ben has a late lunchtime sandwich pending the arrival of the London train. Back to Beadnell next time.