THE BORDERS
Scotland’s spectacular roads aren’t only found on the West Coast. The Southern Uplands, straddling the Scots/england border, are pretty good too...
AS ANYONE WHO’S visited the Scottish Highlands knows, there’s a whole heap of Scotland to ride across first – and in our rush to get north and chase the big-name locations, it’s often overlooked. Scotland’s softer, southerly topographies have a lot to offer. The Southern Uplands — made up of Dumfries and Galloway and The Borders — ignores national boundaries, crossing into Northumberland in a swathe of low mountains, hillsides, moorland and wooded glens. They trace the Anglo/scots boundary from Berwick-upon-tweed on the east coast, encompassing Jedburgh, Hawick, the Northumberland National Park and Kielder forest reaching down to Moffat and Carlisle in the west. The region is a biking playground packed with great rides and a wide variety of road types.
Our favourite route takes in a bit of everything: a two-day loop running from the A1 jump-off north of Newcastle, across the Northumberland National Park, crosses into Scotland, winds across towards Hawick then down to Moffat before retracing a few miles and finding an alternative run back through Kielder forest to the A1 again.
The traditional Scots touring wisdom is it’s best to ride between mid-april to late October, with a caveat that the later in the season you leave it, the worse the midges will be. But what better way to appreciate Moffatdale’s great glacial trough, bludgeoned 2.6 million years ago from Silurian greywacke, with great slopes rising and falling either side of Moffat Water in geological grandeur. Riding here is humbling; a privilege, 2.6 million years in the making. The roads feel purpose-built with the intention of bringing out the misbehaviour in a motorcyclist; a reminder bikes should be naughty as well as nice.
‘Riding here is humbling; a privilege’