The Herald - The Herald Magazine
Beautiful borders In the footsteps of the
Location:
Distance: Time: Grade:
IPAUSED just past Jedderfield Farm to take in the ever-expanding view of the Tweed Valley and the glorious hills that surround it. Actually that’s not quite true. I paused much more to get my breath back, reflecting as I did so that when I lived in Peebles this was one of my regular training runs.
I knocked it off almost without thinking about it, whereas now the track up to Jedderfield was a sair pech. Well, it is nearly 40 years since I left Peebles….
In all that time the Borders hills have changed remarkably little, and they are still as beautiful.
This walk gives outstanding views, looking north to the Moorfoots and east to the radio mast on Dunslair Heights, the start of a superb ridge walk to Lee Pen above Innerleithen that was another of my favourites.
The towns are still as attractive too, perhaps especially Peebles with its broad High Street and the stately River Tweed flowing through.
There have been a number of housing developments but they seem to have been sensitively done and don’t impinge unduly on the scenery.
Part of this walk uses a section of drove road, now a wide grass track. It must have been an amazing spectacle to see the hundreds of head of cattle making their slow way through the countryside.
It is said that the drovers swam their beasts across the Tweed somewhere west of the town rather than pay the toll that the town was entitled to charge.
Once recovered at Jedderfield there was not a lot more climbing before we emerged from a wood onto open country.
The view north to Dundreich, above Edderston, was particularly fine.
As we made our way across to the old drove road we were