Thigh deep daughter -a Type 3 walk

#2 daughter is on gardening leave so came up with Sandy her lurcher for a walk. Now Mr C is into bagging Trig points of course that was our walk, today a 15 minute drive up the valley to the start of the 5 mile round to the Darden Pike Trig.

I had done this walk 17 years ago with Ailie who was training for her Nepal trek. When I told her we were doing it she said (safely from NZ) that she loved that walk.

My On-line ordnance survey map didn’t work as it was out of signal and the paper map said the track we were following petered out after the first hill so we headed back to the other path. Once we got higher and my phone OS worked we saw the original track did extend to the top so we came back that way.

I agree with daughter. She called it a Type 3 walk - it’s only redeeming feature being its end. It really was a slog. We have had so much rain the steep path was a squelchy muddy burn, and the heather hadn’t been burned for years so was up to our thighs in places. Often we couldn’t see the path as the heather had grown over it, so we’d end up with our boots sucking into mud over the ankles. Sensible people might have worn gaiters. The long heather caught in our poles so I have sore shoulders with hauling my sticks out. It also caught in my boot laces which, despite double knots, kept coming undone. In addition the whole walk was accompanied by constant heavy machine gun fire from the Otterburn range across the valley. I remarked that they didn’t stop for lunch. “Wars don’t have lunch breaks” said Mr C.

Eventually we sighted the loch and followed the track from it to the cairn and trig point. The views were fantastic as the sky had cleared and we could see to Cheviot, still with ridges of snow, and the whole length of the Border Ridge. However we couldn’t linger as we still had to get down and daughter was fretting as she was so late she’d be going to have to go to James’s parents’ evening in her mucky trousers which had mud to her knees.

I bet you are glad you weren’t with us!

This is daughter forging ahead on the descent - thigh deep in heather and Sandy can’t be seen.