The Covenanters Grave on Martins Birthday Walk

Martin selected an 11 mile walk starting in West Linton and taking us up to about 1400ft and the Coventanters Grave. If the walk had been yesterday we would never have made it as there was a lot of snow and it had been a white out then. Today the weather was much better, but a biting cold east wind. We were joined by a another Ken who is a friend of Martin and Aileen's and he had been down for Martin's Birthday party and their 40th Wedding Anniversary party the night before. Gaye and I had been invited but unfortunately Gaye was called to Holy Orders playing the part of a Nun in LAODS show The Sound of Music so we missed it. We missed an excellent party and both of us wish them "a the best".
The walk was very difficult in places and the route from the Covenanters Grave back to the track was in deep snow with many dangerous drifts covering up ditches and holes. I fell twice and the others were much the same.
Also missing today was Peter who has the flu so we wish him a speedy recovery together with Elizabeth who is also unwell.
Unfortunately I left my camera in the car so these have been taken by my phone camera and they are not very good.



The Dry Stane Dike in the photograph shows how the snow was driving out of the East yesterday. Unfortunately at this time of day the light was not very good.

At this point we left the road to follow the path to the Covenanters Grave and the path had dissapeared but luckily we managed to follow the footsteps of another walker about 300 yards ahead of us. From the grave we should have turned and go back the way we had come but Martin suggested we head north and would eventually come to a service road for the water pipeline. Big Mistake. It was really tough and because I was leading the way I was the first to fall into a deep ditch that looked ok but it was a snowdrift. Luckily I was not hurt but got a bit of a fright so from then on we all took it very carefully and used our sticks to search for the ditches and hidden streams.
This eventually lead us to a steep valley and that caused more problems as it was quite slippy and again I fell but this time on my backside so as it has plenty padding I was ok.

Lunch at the end of the tough section.

Before we got back onto a proper service road we came upon this house called Medwynhead. It is boarded up but looks in good condition so maybe it is used during the summer. It is one of the most remote houses in the Borders and has no elecrticity or phone line. The garden shows signs of having been cultivated. If you want to get away from it all this is definately the place.
We made it back to the start having been away for over 5 hours and it was then into the Gordon Arms for soup and a Panini next to a roaring log fire.