Day 49 - Peebles to Carlops
It wasn't the blackbirds that woke me up this morning but screeching of Oystercatchers! Bit on the chilly side this morning so back to long sleeved top although still sporting the shorts. Another freebie night courtesy of Jackie at the Cross Keys Inn. Really feeling the cold and as today is a relatively short day (and I didn't want to arrive to early at my next destination), only went 1/2 mile before I was stopping for a coffee! Warmed up a tad, next stop was to the local council offices who managed to find an embossed stamper in their archives and duly added this to my passport. On along quiet lane until I reached what was shown as a footpath on my maps - the thing with Scotland is that very few of their footpaths are actually waymarked, it's more a case of being able to 'wander' anywhere as long as you don't cause any damage and basically leave the place as you find it. There was a bit of a route through the undergrowth as I set off alongside the burn (Scottish word for a stream) and then along a grassy path once a thriving railway line. Through a couple of fields full of sheep and as I was trying to work out where the path continued, a shout from a parked car made me look up...'keep going, good luck' - it was the family who had been sat on the table next to me in the pizza restaurant last night! I then entered the estate of Barony Castle, now the headquarters of the Scottish Ambulance and also DeVere owned. The footpath itself headed around the property in pretty woodland with rabbits running everywhere in front of me. After a nice route through tall pine trees I emerged onto a track which then led to yet another quiet lane and towards the large Fountains forestry plantation. Unfortunately there was a huge area of deforestation and the machinery were hard at work pulling down magnificent pine trees, seeming to work along the whole row, stripping all the branches to leave just the useable trunk and then starting on the next row. All around me were areas of woodland razed to the ground which really didn't make for a pretty sight. It was still pretty chilly but the sky was definitely breaking up. I was just about to enter an untouched thick pine forest when the sun decided to show itself and the temperature raised dramatically....typical. So I just waited in the sun until it disappeared again and then entered the wood - shame to waste all that solar energy! Once I emerged from the woods, the sun was still out so I changed into my t-shirt and lay on the grass for a while chewing on the ends of pieces of grass mulling over my journey so far...not a bad way to spend 1/2 hour or so. After this it was all road work, albeit on more quiet lanes and to be honest they were quite nice to run along (apart from the busier A701 that I needed to run along for a km or so). The Pentland Hills ahead of me got ever closer - I would be climbing those tomorrow en-route to Balerno and then into Edinburgh but they looked really pretty with the sun shining on them. After about 3 miles I reached the pretty village of Carlops, which used to be a weavers village and as I was still a bit early, stopped off at the Allan Ramsay Hotel for a cup of tea....definitely not a 'slaughtered lamb' pub as the few people who were having a drink were all extremely friendly and one of them even paid for my cuppa! Duly refreshed I then ran the mile or so up the hill to my next overnight stop at Peggyslea Farm, a fab place where Annette is making me feel really at home - she's kindly lent me her laptop so I can update the blog myself and give John yet another holiday (he's off to Queens to watch the tennis over the weekend, so the responsibility reverts back to me again). Went back down to the Allan Ramsay this evening and almost got a hero's welcome! Couple of guys were enlisted as my PAs for the night and we managed to raise another £30.50.
Mileage 17.3 and time 3.45

Total mileage 814.54