I HAD to head south to Englandshire for a few days to the tribal gathering that is the Kendal Mountain Film Festival.
Knowing full well that I would be in for a couple of days of socialising and sitting in darkened rooms watching other people strut their adventurous stuff, I thought I'd stop off in the borderlands first and do a bit of strutting myself.
Where better than the lovely hills that line the long gash of Moffatdale. Interesting hills, and with some great names too.
I left Tibbie Shiels Inn, by St Mary's Loch, with the intention of traversing the skyline tops that run along the north side of Moffatdale as far as the Carrifran Glen.
I passed the monument to James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, who once enjoyed a drink or two at Tibbie Shiels' in the company of Sir Walter Scott, and plodded up the steep grassy slopes of Oxcleuch Rig. After days of almost continual rain, the ground squelched below my boots, and as I crossed a large expanse of waterlogged ground on the summit of Shielhope Hill, I couldn't help but notice the name of the neighbouring hill. 'Drowning Dubs' said it all!
As I splashed my way across this high and wide landscape, I was encouraged by the sight of the sheep-cropped grass ridges of Lochcraig Rig and White Coomb ahead of me, but before I could reach those dry slopes, I had to drop down into the steep-sided valley of the Winterhope Burn.
These hills of Dumfries and Galloway can be incredibly steep-sided, and this one, Muckle Knees, was no exception.
I immediately nicknamed it Knackered Knees, because mine were by the time I limped to the bottom of the slope!
The Winterhope glen, with its empty buildings, circular sheep fanks and snaking burn, was an atmospheric spot, a poignant reminder that even here in the deep glens and cleuchs of the borderlands, depopulation is almost as great a problem as it is in the highlands.
Few people, particularly younger folk, want to live in such relative isolation nowadays.
Only the sheep and the ravens remain, and the whispers of days when this lovely valley would have supported several families.
If I had found it difficult accessing the Winterhope glen from Muckle Knees, it was even harder work getting out of it.
A long and grinding pull dragged me up Lochcraig Rig to the summit of Lochcraig Head at 800 metres, high above Loch Skeen.
From here, the south Tweedsmuir hills cut an empty, desolate quarter of the Scottish Borders. Rising between the Moffat Water and the source of the Tweed, these are well-rounded hills with boggy skirts which exude a very definite air of wet and wildness.
Like Drowning Dubs and Muckle Knees, other place-names, like Rotten Bottom (between White Coomb and Hart Fell) or Dead for Cauld (south west of the Megget Reservoir) leave little to the imagination, but the air of desolation and the vastness of the views from the summit of nearby White Coomb at 2696ft/822m are fitting, for this is the highest hill in Dumfriesshire.
Loch Skeen, described by an 1891 Scottish Mountaineering Club hill walking party as "a lovely little loch, lying in a veritable cradle of bare stony slopes topped by precipitous crags".
Well popular with anglers, Loch Skeen is one of the jewels of the area, but I was going to stay high above it on the high-level rigs (ridges) that connect Firthybrig Head, Donald's Cleuch Head and Firthhope Rig before dropping down to the aptly named Rotten Bottom.
A number of years ago, ecologists found pollen trapped in the peat here, and from it discovered that the area was once densely wooded with birch, rowan, larch and holly.
Today, the Borders Woodland Trust, working with the John Muir Trust, has planted the Carrifran Glen, the deep-cut glen that runs down from Rotten Bottom to Moffatdale with all these native species.
In ten or 20 years' time, these new trees will represent what this glen was like several hundred years ago.
I dropped steeply down into the glen, and as I reached the roadside at Carrifran, calculated that I had only walked about 10 miles. It felt like twice that!
These hills of Dumfries and Galloway can be as tough as anything the Rough Bounds of Knoydart can throw at you, and are often just as wet!
www.cameronmcneish.co.uk
