Sandria & Niall's Birthday Walk at Devil's Beef Tub

Today was a joint Birthday Walk for both Sandria and Niall so Sandria or maybe it was John selected a walk round the top part of the Annandale Way round the Devil's Beef Tub. There was 4 of us from Langholm and 3 from Edinburgh so we met a few miles north of  Moffat on the A701 at the roads highest point. The walk was shown as 5.5 miles but in actual fact we covered almost 7.5 miles. This photograph was taken by an American motorist from Seattle who had stopped to look at the view. 

And this was the view from the highest point of the walk at Great Hill overlooking the Devil's Beef Tub with the start of Annandale in the valley. 

The birthday pair pose for a photograph.  

There was quite a lot of climbing on the walk but it was not too steep and what was even better quite dry under foot. There were patches of snow but nothing too deep.

And this is the source of the River Annan according to the plaque on the cairn.

On the long drop down into the valley there has been loads of trees planted that should return the valley to the way it was many hundreds of years ago.

An unusual sheep pen

These lambs were in the shed at Ericstane Farm. They were much warmer here than on the open hillside where the start of the hill lambing is due now. 

More of the newly planted trees mostly Birch but we did see quite a few Juniper trees as well.
Almost exactly 4 hours after we started we were back at the car and ended our walk with a late lunch in Brodies back in Moffat. I was delighted to present the members of the Last of the Summer Wine Walking Group with photo albums recording their many walks together over the years. We have another Birthday Walk next Wednesday when it will be Peter's and a 6 mile walk near Galashiels.