Saturday 16 July 2011

Day 29- Melrose to Town Yetholm

Longest day ever.......however, it was our own faults as we didn't leave until 12 o'clock. We were shattered and managed to lie in unitl 10am A mistake which we shall never make again even if it means leaving at 8am every morning! As nice as the Melrose campsite was, I don't enjoy waking up and going in to putrid smelling toilets, it was absolutely disgusting, me and Becks could not believe a human, especially a woman could produce such a stink, worst thing was the smell was so bad you could not tell what cubical it was coming from! No one wants to come out of the smelly cubical! 
Today we left the Southern Upland Way away from the hideous flies and joined the St.Cuthbets way. The Great Glen way scored at 3.5 out out 10, I didn't think another footpath could score so low (canals excluded as the scale doesn't go negative) We rate the St.Cuthbets way a 2 well Becks being lame has given it a 5, weirdo. It was just a complete mish mash of fields, tracks, roads, back gardens and woods. I knew  it wasn't going to be a good day when the only eating utensil i could find to eat my spaghetti hoops was my knife! After struggling to eat over a mess tin, Becks 'magically' found it!  


Walking today felt like we were always moving, always walking but not actually getting anywhere.... looking at the map the path seemed to take us all around the world until it got to where we wanted to i, i think it was a 20 miler so leaving at 12 was silly as we can complete 10 miles by 12pm! Judging by our timings we knew that we wouldn't reach Kirk Yetholm until 9.30 - 10, it was good to know early on as it would have only depressed us being too optimistic. The path really started to take the stripey Micheal when we had to walk up a vertical field, just to walk back down the other side! We then had to cross a dodgy suspension bridge which shook as you crossed it, it didn't feel that it could take both mine and Beck's weight (2 very light ladies now!)




As the map shown, we were still a long way by dinner time so we broke it up in to 3 smaller sections, mentally this helped as time soon passed, our last 4 miles were along the road from Morebattle, we were hoping that the shops would be open as we didn't have anything for dinner, but the shops were closed as it was about 9 o clock :( At least we had digestive biscuits for dinner. 


Town Yetholm could not come quick enough! WE finally reached the campsite at about 10pm and received what can only be described as the rudest customer service ever. I have told Becks, i need to send many companies on a customer training weekend as they are just not up to scratch! As i said we arrived at 10 which seemed pretty late, the shed where the warden sits was closed, usually they give directions to late arrivals which are; find a pitch and pay in the morning, the field was pretty empty so we walked down to camp near the shower block when i heard an angry knock on the window, i turned around and a man was standing at the window gesturing us to go up to the  house, I love doing extra walking with a limp and a rucksack. Not. When we got to the house the wife came out and said to Becks 'Its rude to just walk in you should knock' Well i don't think we could have won either way becuase if we had knocked i'm sure she would have said; its pretty late you should have paid in the morning. Took an instant dislike, they were asking us what we were doing and asked if we had STARTED! Of course we have strated! Were on day 29 muggins! As she saw me limping she asked me if i had a bad foot! I think i ignored her, i was just not in the mood, the man said we needed to knock as he needed to show us where to go, he led us to the same spot we were planning on going anyway, luckily it was only a fiver each, but the woman was such a money grabber! If there was another campsite we would have made like a swiss and rolled but there wasn't and we were not prepared to cut off our noses to spite our faces. 

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