After our rest day yesterday, it’s a big day today. We have a great breakfast, then head out towards the river Annan via a stop at the local bakery. We don’t go past the Star Hotel, however, which is in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s narrowest hotel. We do see a grey heron on the way though.
We rejoin the Annandale Way heading to the river on an excellent path. This eventually goes up onto the road and then onto the fellside, to reach the river’s sources. It takes us up towards the Devil’s Beef Tub, a scoured out valley in the hills. As we get higher up, it starts to rain and the cloud descends. We leave the way here for good now, as this section is circular and we are heading north.
Initially, we take a wide forest path between plantation conifers, sheltering from the rain under their branches for a break. We then come to a field. The cloud around us is now quite dense and, as there is no path, we rely on mapping and direction. This works well and takes us to a road that we then cross.
We go over a fence with wild raspberries nearby and enter a field. This is called Bog Hill and consists of tussocks of grass and heather and bog. It’s incredibly hard work but we make progress and soon cross bilberries to enter the plantation on Little Bog Hill. The adjective refers only to size of the hill, as the bogginess worsens significantly. We follow some fence posts between young conifers, heather, tussocks and mush. We watch every step and it’s hard, slow, physical work. It is brutal.
We reach a bit of yellowish ground and Richard says ‘I don’t like the look of this’. Nevertheless, he crosses it without difficulty. The same cannot be said for me. With my shorter legs, I end up with one leg up to my thigh in the bog. I chuck my pack over, rearrange my good leg to get some purchase and, with Rich’s help, extricate myself. Once on the other side, I tip the water out of my boot and Rich squeezes out my sock. When I put the boot back on, it is drier than the other one and Richard’s: our boots have all but given up. Thank goodness we’ve ordered some new ones.
We carry on through less boggy, but no less backbreaking terrain and, as we do, Rich asks me if I could touch the bottom of the bog. In fairness, I wasn’t trying to push down but the answer is no. At last, I can see a white outline rising from the hill in the distance: it’s a wind turbine. This is our next goal and we trudge uphill over heather and dead trees to get there.
When we reach the wind turbine, we shelter behind it from the elements to have lunch. We don’t linger and even both put on our waterproof trousers to keep warm as we leave. Wind turbines all have service tracks to them, so these form convenient routes across the hillside. As we go along, we pass more and more turbines. Suddenly, the cloud begins to lift and we are surrounded by turbines on every hill for miles around. This is the Clyde Wind Farm.
The Clyde Wind Farm comprises 206 turbines, generating enough renewable energy to power almost 300,000 homes. There is permissive access to the wind farm and the network of tracks is huge. Today, there are only us and three hares using the tracks. It is very eerie in the mist, listening to the turbines. Most just swish, but some creak and softly moan. They are a majestic site.
We follow the tracks high across the hills for some time, reaching a highpoint so of 518 metres (1698 feet), then finally come down off the hills via the wind farm’s northern substation. We then follow an unclassified road, past the ruined Crawford Castle, along and eventually over the river Clyde, into Abington. At this point, there is another substantial downpour just to ensure we are wet when we arrive at Abington Services, about a mile or so north of the town. It has been our longest day, our highest sustained day and we have climbed over 1000 metres (3466 feet) and I fell in a bog. No wonder we’re exhausted.
Total distance so far: 493 miles