This, the longest of our Forrest jaunts, was without doubt the most trying, though not due to the terrain, the weather or my map-reading. The day was warm and mostly dry. When it did rain, on the home stretch, it was light enough that the rain jacket stayed stowed. The day’s objective was Torrs, a wee hill south of the Polmaddy Burn.
This outing was planned to visit the memorial that stands beneath Milldown, but we also took in Loch Dungeon and walked by Haggis Hawse and Loch Minnoch. The sun was out and Winter’s chills had relaxed into the warmth of Spring. When I had walked through the Forrest Estate a few years ago, in my Donalds phase, the forest was mature, the views limited and my mind had been on the hills ahead of me. Much of the forest has now been felled.
I mounted at the Water of Ken and had a monstrouse bad road to the Brig of Dee, and from thence to Minygaff. All the way is either full of precipices or rocks. The pass called the Sadle Loup is here about 4 miles from Minygaff. Nothing in the Alps is worse.
To every choice there is a purpose. But such purposes can slip one’s mind. We had paused our planned walks along the Eden Way for the winter, choosing instead to walk on firm ground such as forestry tracks. This section of the Old Edinburgh Road, between Clatteringshaws and Black Loch, has the OS map symbol for “other road track or path, unfenced” and though much of it is freshly surfaced forestry track suitable for heavy vehicles, the first 200m from the loch is unmaintained overgrown and in places waterlogged, while the track beyond an old quarry below Brockloch Hill is trying to pass itself off as a waterway. Had I remembered the purpose of choosing Forestry tracks for our Winter walks I might not have ventured onto the wilder sections until the winter wetness had passed.
There must be a great many Old Edinburgh Roads. This one joined Edinburgh, the country’s secular capital, to Whithorn, its religious heart and was a route for pilgrims. James IV* travelled it several times. As times changed, the route would become the main coach road to the harbour of Portpatrick. The railways, and then our modern roads have replaced it, but its route is still shown on the OS maps between the Water of Ken and the Cree. The Forestry have built some of their tracks along it and Sustrans seem to have quietly adopted some of it into National Cycleway no. 7. I say quietly adopted, because the section we walked from the the Tonderghie Burn to Auchenleck it is marked on the OS map as a cycle route, has cycle route 7 signs every few hundred metres but isn’t on the Sustrans website. It is now a forestry track, recently resurfaced. It had been topped with sea shells when I walked it a few years ago but now has a surface of bluish grey gravel. There had been quite a lot of felling hereabouts so presumably this was for the benefit of logging trucks. But at least it lends itself to dry feet on a walk through a pretty boggy landscape.
