Day 28 - Near Traiqfart - Melrose

How can so much rain fall out of one sky in one day? Serious meteorology in action! In good old Jade and becks style we started the day in negative miles, we had to get ourselves back to Traiqfart as this is where we would pick up the Southern Highland Way which would take us to Melrose. As usual the day started with a hill to get the heart going and to ensure we were fully sweaty before lunch, Going up this hill we must have received the hottest weather known to man, it was so hot it was unreal! Just before 'summiting' it did what it always did in Scotland  It rained. It was raining really hard so we ducked for shelter in the woods, we were hoping it was a passing shower so thought about staying in the woods until it passed. It didn't pass. And if we stayed in the woods, we would have been there for 8 hours. 


So we manned up and put on our coats, this was my first encounter of the flies. Even though i was sat next to Becks they just liked to fly and hang around me, circling me! I thought when we got moving i could shake them off, the rain was relentless or as Chris Hodgson would say 'tenacious'. It was pretty hilly so wearing a raincoat meant that it was going to be a sweaty day, we were probably just as wet wearing it than not wearing one! We were planning on wild camping today but i already felt disgusting and couldn't even consider not having a shower, soon enough i managed to pick up an enterage of flies, they were driving me mad! They must have followed me for about 10 miles throughout the day, we even walked past a dead sheep and i thought 'Ah, that will throw them off the scent' but no, they preferred to hang around me than a riggamortis laden sheep with one eye! 


I was starting to get really stressed about the whole thing, when the rain died down i couldn't even take my hood down as the flies were buzzing around my face and going in my ear! I was walking about 20m behind Becks in such a mood, I couldn't break as it just made me an easy target! How dare they go and land on poo all day, be sick all over it, lay their eggs then land on me! If Becks thought we were wild camping tonight, she had another thing coming! It was miserable, it was raining, i was hot, and there were flies, and we still had what felt like a marathon left till bed. Urgh. 


This is now Becks: Haha its crazy how we were on the same walk but had totally different experiences!! I had a brilliant day! Although it was really wet and a bit misty it was so pretty from the top and we stayed up high for most of the day so could see all around. Today felt different and its weird because we could tell we were walking into a different place...that might not make sense but maybe you have to be there. Personally i found the fly situation really funny!!...probably as funny as Jade found the poo incident the other day! I really struggled to hold back the laughter because she looked on the verge of tears she was getting that annoyed but i couldn't help it!! I had a giggle watching her occasionally spinning or ducking to throw them off but they just wouldn't leave! 

Definitely nearly got caught going for a nature wee today. We thought the forest on the way into Galashiels would be a hidden enough place but apparently there are a lot of dog walkers there! .....this one appeared out of nowhere! Fortunately Jade was keeping guard so kept the lady chatting!

I know Jade well enough to know that there was no point even mentioning the words wild and camping so when we finally made it into Melrose which was a very cute little place we headed straight for the co-op then along into the campsite. Jade pulled out the charity card and asked if they did 'charity rates' to which the lady replied 'oh just go in for free then'....we didn't expect that but it was very kind and a nice surprise. The campsite was really nice and we went and set the tent up and cooked dinner before showering then making ourselves at home in the laundry room. As usual we used and abused the plug sockets and we washed the dishes in the sink then sat down to catch up on diary!! At about 11 o clock the lights suddenly went off and we were sat there in the dark! We couldn't get the light back on so guessed it was automatic to get people out of the room late at night so we then had to rummage around and find everything in the dark. For the past 28 days i have been going on about my glow in the dark spork and jade has said 'what use is that?' Well....it was very useful tonight and as jade was searching round for her cutlery i felt rather smug!