Walk No: 208
Date: Thursday 18th August 2016
Distance: 5.5 miles approximately (see text below)
Summary: On another warm day twenty four Strollers met in
Earlston for the August walk. Starting at the War Memorial we
made our way up Station Road
and down a flight of stairs to Speedy’s path. That Mexican mouse
Gonzalez gets everywhere! There also seemed to be a lot of steps on this walk,
down then up again, taking us past Sorrowlessfield
Bridge where we crossed the
Leader Water. Sorrowlessfield named as it was the only one to have had no one
killed at Flodden. We then passed Cowdenknowes
House, originally a tower house of four storeys and a corbelled-out parapet
dating back to the 16th Century, where Mary Queen of Scots once stayed in
October 1566, while en route to Jedburgh. Time then to have a seat on the fine
“Badger Bench”, carved from a single tree trunk by chainsaw and installed in
2010. Going through Packman’s Wood and continuing on along the side of Leader
Water where we saw a heron and a flock of Goosanders ducks. Passing Drygrange
which had been a Roman Catholic seminary called St. Andrew's
College founded in 1953 but closed in 1986 and is now a care home. We were able
to look into the walled garden as the current resident has built a step so people
can see her lovely garden. Continuing on we made our way to
the Viaduct over The Tweed where we stopped for lunch sitting at the end of Drygrange Old Bridge, a road bridge dating from
1776.
We
were entertained at lunch by three enthusiasts from Greenock, flying drones
with cameras and using headsets to see what the drones saw. Some Strollers got
the opportunity to try out a headset. Then it was time to partly retrace our
steps past and through Drygrange and the Lodge entrance where we walked back
down the old A68 road and then beside the A68 itself back to Earlston and time
for a snack.
There was a bit of a discussion over the distance travelled but the general
consensus was that Moira’s arithmetic was poor and it was a tad further than
the 5.5 miles she had calculated! (Alistair’s GPS tracked 6.7 miles.) But
everyone was happy and enjoyed the lovely walk.
Thanks to Moira for arranging it
and the good weather.
