18.3 miles time 6h 30m
Well that wasn’t easy. See the elevation to see why. Good walk though. 
At least the second, still to be done, half has a better profile.
I’m sorry Mike but I (Elaine) refuse to believe we only walked 18.3 miles. It was a bloody challenge in itself, not really looking forward to doing 29 now:-( Perhaps you only measured it as the crow flies – I’ve told people we did around 20 miles!!!
Mike – the uphill miles were hard going and judging by our times we must have been going some in the downhill home straight to make up for my pauses up to Minchmoor. From what I recall we took 3 hours 55 mins to Traquair (3.1 mph), lunched for 20 minutes then did 6.3 miles in 2 hours 15m (2.8 mph)
Retrospective:
This was our first recce of the route we were to walk in Hearts and Heroes later in the year. Part of the gradual increase in miles needed as our training. The original plan had been to walk from Tibbie Shiels to Traquair but David, a hard task master as befits his navy background, felt we needed to be pushed harder and had decided we would head for Yarrowford instead. This would be the longest walk I had done for ten years.
We arrived at St Mary’s Loch at about 10 am. I remember the temperature was 6 degrees and this was obviously cold because I was wearing a thick fleece under my coat (unusual for me except in very chilly weather). This route follows the SUW along the south bank of the Loch with David clacking along with walking poles because of his dodgy knee.
David with the sign he repaired
Morale boosters (jelly babies) were deployed at Dryhope and the path then climbed gradually to Blackhouse. I well remember coming to the signpost at Mid Hill and being shocked that it was still 5 miles to Traquair, and our sandwich break.
Traquair itself was a psychological challenge. As the path descended from Blake Muir we could see a village which we presumed to be Traquair. My mind went into “almost there” mode. Soon we could see a bench that seemed a likely spot to rest. But it turned out the bench was in Kirkhope cemetery, so that didn’t seem an appropriate place to stop. Traquair was another mile along the road. A very long mile it seemed.
After lunch on the bench in Traquair we headed up Minchmoor, a steady pull up 350m which served to sap my energy to the extent that I became very quiet (even more so than usual).
By the time we left the SUW to head down towards Yarrowford the temperature had dropped further and we tramped on in silence.
