Thursday 21 June – Carlops to Edinburgh
Today is the longest day. Not distance, of course, but daylight. Today the sun rose at 4.23am and won’t set until 10.03pm. It will have been getting light from 3.30am and won’t get dark till past 11pm. That’s a lot of daylight! In fact, today we rose with the sun well up and will go to sleep with the sun still up. Most odd! We have also regularly been woken at 3.45am by the dawn chorus!!
And sunny it was – a real contrast given all the cloud we’ve had in the past week. We rejoined the Cross Borders Drove Road at West Linton, the path taking us through farmland and on into the hills. As we moved away from the farmland we were back out onto remote heather clad hillsides, today on the Pentland Hills, where even the sheep were few and far between. And not another soul in sight. Given how close we are to Edinburgh (15 miles at most) it was quite surreal to appear to be so isolated. We made the most of this stretch – about 12-13km (7miles) we will be in much more populous areas for the next little while. There were a few very wet areas after the rain but as with yesterday it was mostly a lovely easy track to follow, with gentle gradients.
As we came over the last saddle of the Pentlands we could see the outskirts of Edinburgh, and the newer bridge over the Forth. The pylons supporting the bridge looked like holographic pyramids in the sunshine – quite odd. The Drove Road descended gently down to its finish at the A 702 and from then on we were on quiet country lanes to take us through to Kirk Newton. Originally we were going to catch the train in to Edinburgh from there, but we had decided to continue through to Uphall Station – shortening Saturday’s walk a little. A well-placed newsagents provided the chocolate bars we needed to power us through the extra 6km (3.5miles).
A welcome comfy seat on a train for 20 minutes in to Edinburgh, and a short bus ride took us to our accommodation for the next two nights. Tomorrow is a rest day for us – chores to be done (laundry!) and a castle to explore.
Distance today : 24km / 15 miles
Two views of the Drove Road through the heather-clad Pentland Hills
Scrumpy to Scotch 