The route is available here and the map is below
Christine was optimistic about the weather having seen the 8 o’clock forecast which predicted that the rain that was falling then would be gone by 12. Come 11 o’clock, with it still raining on and off and with no sign of a let up of the black clouds, her faith in the Met Office was shaken. However, soon after it brightened and the roads started to dry in the strong wind. Faith restored! But, come mid afternoon, the skies darkened again and it kept trying to rain (but, thankfully, not succeeding in any meaningful fashion). Faith squashed!!
After an excellent breakfast at the Crosskeys Hotel (another recommendation if you are in that neck of the woods), the day began with a short, tough climb out of Canonbie to the by-pass which is the A7. Early on a Saturday morning there was not much traffic but progress was slow on what cyclists call a “heavy road”. The combination of wet, a deceptive uphill and the “wrong sort” of tarmac meant the bikes did not roll as they should have.
In Langholm (scene of some sort of horse race that closed the A7 on the previous evening, apparently - very popular as we were unable to get a hotel there when we tried booking) we turned off the main road and started climbing up the Esk valley. Our view was somewhat restricted by the rain and the clouds but what we could see of it was very pretty.
As we climbed we saw the occasional sign to a “Tibetan Centre”. Eventually, near the top, wecame across it. We were sort of expecting a country house with Flower People lounging about and saying "Peace, maaaaan!" Instead there was a Buddha in the middle of a pond, some flags and a building that might have been a temple and nobody about other than a bemused looking German motorcyclist!
Once over the top we had a long freewheel down the other side - lovely! But inevitably, there were more hills to come. Round here they do not seem to be as steep as the Devon and Cornwall hills but they go on for much longer.
We had lunch at an inn in the middle of nowhere - apparently halfway between Edinburgh and Carlisle and also between Glasgow and Newcastle. The barman was a chatty sort and said that they had a lot of End To End cyclists passing throiugh and staying with them. Most people seemed to be aiming for 10-16 days but the quickest were two young lads who were trying to do it in 5 days and spent their third night there. Imagine that! Three days from Land’s End to a place about 30 miles south of Edinburgh! We left feeling slightly inadequate having taken 9½ days to do the same!
This is an unusual kirk that we passed in Traquair close to Scotland‘s oldest inhabited house - apparently visited by 27 kings but not by us as we pressed on.
Out of Peebles, we faced one last climb - thankfully much more gradual than the previous ones and, sooner than we expected, we were swooping down into Penicuik to find the hotel.
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