Clintmains to Kelso Tales of walks along the Borders Abbeys Way
Report by Susan Kevan Scottish Borders Council Countryside Ranger
The start of our walk found us walking along a track past Magdalenehall to Tweed. A heron flew
off as we approached the river. As it was a Sunday there were no anglers. It would probably have been a busy stretch of water if we had chosen a weekday for our walk.
A pair of swans were on an island and downstream we saw another pair. Above the water
oystercatchers called "oik". When we stopped for a break, peewits flapped round above us
in their own peculiar way and called "Peewee". Peewits have two other names - lapwings or green plovers.
We walked from Old Dalcove along a track with a skylark calling high above a field of yellow oil seed rape. At a high point on the road we had a view in all directions. We stopped a while to get our bearings. Smailholm Tower stood proud to the North of us on the crags at Sandyknowe Farm. We looked back down on the Tweed where we had just been
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Keith Robeson, our senior ranger, counted the people he could see by the river. There were two other groups of walkers and a family with a dog, over 20 people in all. He pointed out a whitethroat in the trees nearby. A summer visitor to our countryside, this warbler calls "wit, wit, wit, witchity, witchity, chair"!
At Makerstoun we passed the former school, which is now used by the Guides. This got the women in the group reminising about camping trips, bonfires, uniforms and badges. One woman had been a guide in Canada which prompted comments from the group about bears in campsites.Quite a lot of the adults who climb hills or walk on long distance walks were introduced to outdoor adventures years ago in a youth group like the guides or the scouts.
It was a long walk on the road through Haymount to Wester Muirdean. The benefit of this was
that it was easy walking with good views. It did not take long before we were in a rough old lane with hawthorn bushes on one side and trees including multi-stemmed oaks on the other.
A stone on the track had been used as a thrushes anvil. The evidence was snail shell pieces in a pile, left after lunch for Mavis.
Waymarkers and fingerposts make the whole of the Borders Abbeys Way easy to follow. These were organised by Borderpath staff, this last section to be completed was negotiated by Martin Palminter. Martin has moved south now to Northumberland where he is busy organising the route for another path "St Oswolds Way". Thanks are due to the many land managers and farmers along the entire route who welcome responsible walkers. The sheep and cattle fields, tracks by fields of barley and wheat, and farm buildings that we have walked past, are part of the working life of the people who live there.
Our walk continued past Kames Knowes and Berryhill and a dead elm tree whose days are numbered. It is on our maintenance list to be "made safe" to ensure there is no chance that any of it could fall on anyone.
An avenue of tall poplars was our route to Kelso Race Course and once in the town, we reached a grassy park with a good view across Kelso . On we went to the Cobby Riverside walk. For Keith and three of the walkers this was the last half mile to complete the whole of the Borders Abbeys Way for the first time.
Kelso Abbey was where the six of our Ranger led walks had started only five weeks before. The route had taken many years to develop as a circular walking route. Some of the sections have been walked for hundreds of years, some parts of the walk were in places that really were new for walkers. The work done over the last years has linked all these together. The benefits to walkers are many. We now have links between many of the border towns that we can walk. Bus routes allow us to get back to where we started to make a series of good day-long walks. Some walkers will use it as a way to explore the Borders for a holiday, walking the whole circuit in a week, and exploring our towns as they progress. Others will do a few miles at a time or just enjoy a short walk close to where they live.
People who live on the route might invite friends and family to visit and to try a section for a day. Buy a snack for lunch to take with you and finish with a bar meal or a coffee before getting the bus home. History, wildlife, keeping fit, training for a walk on holiday somewhere further afield, whatever your interest, the newly completed Borders Abbeys Way is there to be walked.
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