Borders Walking Vacation - The Walk

(This is the first of three blog entries on our recent walking trip to the Scottish Borders.)

Last week, Alette and I took a 6-day vacation to the Scottish Borders that consisted of a walk of just over 100 km along the Borders Abbeys Way. Our accommodation and baggage transfer were organized by Make Tracks (who subcontracted the baggage transfer to Walking Support). We've been on similar vacations in England before - the Ridgeway in 2003 and part of the South West Coast Path in 2004, both organized by Contours Walking - but this was our first time in Scotland. We really like these vacations since they offer wonderful scenery, great exercise, are very relaxing, and require very little decision making during the trip since the itinerary is set for you in advance.

Our trip took us through several Borders towns and was broken down as follows:

• Jedburgh to Hawick (23 km)
• Hawick to Selkirk (19 km)
• Selkirk to Melrose (16 km)
• Melrose to St Boswells (10 km)
• St Boswells to Kelso (19 km)
• Kelso to Jedburgh (22 km)
  

Since Jedburgh is only a 2-hour (local) bus ride from Edinburgh, we didn't need any accommodation on either the first or last legs. However, this meant that we had to carry all of our luggage on our own on these days - a good test for when we decide to forgo the baggage transfer option all together on a future walking trip. It was also nice to have shorter days in the middle of our route, allowing our muscles to adjust and recover, and allowing us to do a bit more sight-seeing.

To our surprise, despite the relatively short distances travelled, the landscape was quite varied on each day. We saw rolling hills, meandering rivers, farmer's fields, thick forests, and numerous animals including cows, bulls (only 2), horses, geese, rabbits, a stoat carrying the head of a rabbit, chickens, pigs, sheep, and several kinds of birds. On two occasions we encountered sheep that had strayed from their enclosure, including once when they felt trapped and went charging past us to get back to their point of escape. As for the weather, despite the forecasts we fared surprisingly well. A spot of rain on a few days, but when the heavy rains did come we were usually in our hotel or B&B. Having been in Scotland for almost a year, we've now learned that you don't get 'sunny days' or 'rainy days' but rather days that somehow cover multiple weather possibilities.

As per usual, click on the picture above to see our collection of photos. Up next is part two of three - a blog entry about the towns we visited along our route.