Important Info

Planned kilometres: 26 (cummulative 1129)

Kilometres walked: 29 (cummulative 1187)

% Completed (based on 1800km trip): 65.7%

Weather: Sunshine

Pubs visited: St. Ronan, The Cornerhouse

Pints: 3 (cummulative 151)

Kms per pint: 7.9

Blisters: 0 (cummulative 4)

 

Melrose to Innerleithen

My walk today was along the roads as this is the only quick option to get to Innerleithen. The good thing was that the A7 which I walked for the first couple of hours had a footpath, so it was an easy walk.

 

The footpath on the A7 finished at Peel, so I left the A7 and followed a minor road that went through forestry area. The minor road followed the river on the opposite side to the A7 and during the 2 hours or so walking on this road, I only had 6 vehicles go past.

I cross back over the river at Walkerburn which is a village that was originally designed and built to house workers for a Tweed Mill that was built in the area. On the way through town I walked past mill worker housing and say that the green opposite the houses was being used to hang out washing. The green made an excellent pace to dry washing but I’m not sure that many of us would want to hang our washing out where everyone can see it.

On the walk-through town I came across a ‘The Old Mill Bell’ and ‘The Wee Man’. The bell is from the original mill and was used to summon workers too the mill and to signal lunch breaks and end of the working day.

Walkerburn had the highest casualty rate in Scotland during the Great War as a proportion of the population. In 1920 a memorial was built and as the statue was smaller than life size, it became known as ‘Wee Man’. In 1997 the statue was stolen so the town undertook fund raising to get a full-sized figure statue which was unveiled in 1999. Subsequently in 2000 the stolen statue was discovered beside Edinburgh Airport and it was returned to the village and now sits next to the Bell.

 

The town also has a French style ‘pissoir’ that was installed as a public toilet on the A72 beside the bridge over the Walker Burn. As you can see form the photo below it is still there however it is no longer in use.

I saw the following real estate sign on a farm in town and had no idea what it was saying. I googled it and “Mony a mickle maks a muckle” means something along the lines of “many little things add up to a lot”.

After arriving in Innerleithen, I went down the main street of town, stopped at St. Ronan pub for a couple of beers and heard the following words of wisdom from one of the patrons who was getting shit about his haircut “don’t let anyone pissed cut your hair”.