Great English Walk Day 33 - 20 April 2018

Kidland Forest to Threestoneburn Wood
Walking 7.50am to 6.15pm
Distance walked today 12 miles
Distance walked so far 502 miles
Distance left 42 miles

The night's pitch was actually very good. So much of the forest I passed this morning had been felled. There might have been some possibilities a mile or so further on but a good decision was made to stop where I did.

Leaving the forest, the views really opened up as I descended on a good grassy path to Uswayford, said to be one of the most remote farms in England.

Past Uswayford, my guide book and the map indicate a path immediately to the left of Clay Burn. I tried it but it was very difficult so I turned back and used the path just above it through the forest but not shown on the map but there was a stile leading to it. It bisected a good track just east of Davidson's Linn waterfall. The track went east (the right direction) and is shown on the map as Salter's Road, used for transporting salt in times gone by.

Past Nagshead Knowe, I made a possibility bad choice of route. The GEW takes a high level route over High Cantle, eventually dropping down to Linhope. I took a probably easier way past High and Low Bleakhope farms, all very easy and much on a tarmac farm road. It was very scenic and quite lovely but, because the area south of Linhope was off my map, I didn't know that the road didn't go to Linhope. Consequently, I had to walk beyond it and then had a quite rough and wet traverse of a pasture to regain the GEW route below Dunmoor Hill.

I had then been expecting a relatively easy walk through Threestoneburn Wood (a forest) but virtually all of it had been harvested leaving a very forlorn wasteland. The first few hundred yards were almost pathless and, in a wet section, my right leg went in to just below knee level. Not nice. I then found a forest "road" which made for easy walking.

The approach to Threestoneburn House was over a pathless felled area, whereas the guide book, written when the forest was still standing, indicated a clear and easy path. Oh well.

I had been planning to wild camp by Harthope Burn but thought that if it was no good, the country beyond didn't look promising. So I filled up with water from a burn and found a good forest pitch just past the forest road north of Threestoneburn House. I'll report in tomorrow's posting whether Harthope Burn would have been OK.

I heard my first cuckoo of the year this evening.