The perim eter
Quintin Lake receives a warm welcome as his coastal odyssey continues north of the border
The explorer embraces Scotland’s Right to Roam and cold blue skies
The journey in Scotland begins with me dropping my toothbrush into the toilet, before I head into the icy dawn as flocks of migrating geese fly past the moon.
The exhilaration of the Scottish Right to Roam is soon tempered by physically impassable routes and mazes of barbed wire. A good path will suddenly end at a just-too-wide-to-jump-across ditch or an uncrossable marsh. The footpaths aren’t shown on the maps, so the route I’m following is based on studying other walkers blogs, the government ‘core paths’ website and satellite maps.
Just outside Gretna Green, I detour into a field to see the Lochmaben Stone, a large and mysterious circular glacial erratic. The site also marks the 1448 Battle of Sark, where 3,000 English were killed fighting the Scots, who allegedly lost only 26 men.
Ruts of frozen mud and marshy ground with a skin of ice make tricky going. The flooded icy fields emit the occasional crack and creak, momentarily tricking me into thinking I’m not alone. Despite the cold, the sky is blue and the light is golden. Long, almost horizontal, shadows give the landscape a powerful tonal contrast.
The distant horizon throughout the day is dominated by the Iron Age hill fort of Ward Law, where I end up pitching my tent. The sky is incredibly clear and black, and my intention is to make some astro photography from this high ground. After dinner, I head out of the tent with the tripod readied, but I’m quickly driven back into the tent by the ferocity of the sub-zero wind.
I come to dread seeing the word ‘merse’ marked on the map: although it’s the Scottish name for salt marsh, it begins to represent a kind of expletive to me. The merse seem navigable until one reaches an unjumpable ditch that requires a mile or more of backtracking to passable ground. It’s during one such zigzag that I meet a farmer while crossing his merse, away from any path. Rather than tell me to get off his land, as would happen in England, he lets me know the easiest fences to cross and asks if I’m alright for food. This heartwarming encounter confirms the Right to Roam is fully embraced on the ground. I leave him with a grateful wave as he returns to fixing his fences.