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INTRODUCTION

Dun Rig and Hundleshope Heights from Kailzie Hill (Walk 28)

From the Atlantic Ocean to the North Sea, one big line of hills stretches all the way along the southern edge of Scotland. The Southern Uplands – it’s the range that’s about as big as the Pennines but you’ve probably never been to. Here are over 80 hills of 2000ft (600m) or more – and the smaller ones are also important. And it’s a country with its own character – green and gentle, but with hidden surprises.

The Lake District, Snowdonia and the Scottish Highlands – UK walkers, quite rightly, clamber their rocky ridges and queue at their summit cairns. For this writer at least, and without wanting to be impolite to the Pennines, the Southern Uplands are the UK’s fourth great range. In terms of land area, it’s Lakeland three times over, or six Snowdonias.

Any walking lifetime should include some time – 44 days, say – in these distinctive hills. ‘Smooth classics’ we can call them, where the wind sings in the grasses, and clouds drift across an empty glen with its twisting river. Here are snowfields where the only footprints belong to a fox who’s just as chilly and bewildered as you are. From the huge views of the Cheviots to the mysteries of iced-over Loch Enoch, this lost bit of Scotland is your local Siberia.

Boundaries of the Borders

The Pennine Way approaches Auchope Hut on the Border Ridge to The Cheviot (Walk 44)

Logically – and indeed geologically – the Southern Uplands have their northern edge at the faultline scarp of the Southern Upland Fault, a clearly defined hill edge from Dunbar to Ballantrae. And their southern boundary is the wide vale of the Tweed. The Southern Upland Way, Scotland’s longest long-distance path, follows this band of high ground. Starting at the Solway, the component ranges are the granite slabs of Galloway (Section 1), Dumfriesshire’s Lowthers and Carsphairn group (Section 2), the Moffat and Manor Hills (Sections 3 and 4 respectively), the Moorfoots south of Edinburgh (Sections 4 and 5), and across to the Lammermuirs above North Sea (Section 5). This main range makes up the greater part of this book.

Across on the south side of the Tweed valley, the Cheviots of the Anglo-Scottish border are linked with the main Southern Uplands by a common harsh history of the Border cattle-thieving times. And that history reflects a common geography of sheltered, fertile glens, self contained below wide miles of empty hill – ideal for cattle-raiders’ ponies. This border range makes up the book’s Section 6.

In between the two, the Tweed itself has a couple of quite different summits. The small volcanic lumps of Eildon and Rubers Law (both Section 4) have their own special atmosphere, steep and stony above the wide valley with its great river. And the so-called Scottish Lowlands, north of that faultline scarp, have similar wee treats – Tinto (Section 3) and North Berwick Law and the pokey-up Pentlands at the very edge of Edinburgh (all in Section 5). These add-on hills are pleasing in themselves, and even more so as a contrast with the big, but gently grassy, main range. Without such volcanic oddities as Arthur’s Seat (at the end of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile) or Ailsa Craig (several miles out to sea in the Firth of Clyde), the Southern Uplands would retain their massive grandeur but lose something of the fun.

And so this book extends itself south as far as the England–Scotland border, and runs north to Edinburgh and Glasgow. The Cheviots are approached from their Scottish side, including The Cheviot itself, which is a hill in England. (‘Pending reconquest’, as a Scottish Nationalist might say.)

Real remoteness

Loch Enoch, Rhinns of Kells from Redstone Rig (Walk 5)

The Southern Uplands have more real remoteness than anywhere south of the Highland Line. From Nithsdale or Eskdale or Ettrick, walkers can venture into the hills for 20km or more before the next lonely glen with its little white farmhouses and silver river. Some hills around the edges have paths formed by previous visitors, and the Pentlands are positively convivial. But in the Southern Upland heartlands, those 20km could be covered without meeting anybody else at all.

Old paths or modern grouse-shooters’ tracks lead up to the airy tops. Here walkers can cover an awful lot of ground up among the cloudberry and under the open sky and the skylarks. The going is fast and grassy, across a couple, or six, or a dozen of the rounded hills.

Gaze down into hidden hollows such as Hen Hole or the Beef Tub, where cattle thieves and Covenanters lurked; walk steep-sided river valleys with grim castles; and come upon sudden views south into England or north to the Highlands along the horizon. And then descend by another old path, or by one of the stream-carved cleuchs or linns, to the Grey Mare’s Tail waterfalls, or a pretty village in red sandstone, or the banks of the wide, wandering River Tweed.

In winter, the snowfields stretch, hump beyond hump, to the misty blue of Edinburgh or of England. Just the tops of the fence posts stick out of the snow. Follow them along the ridge for an hour or two, and find yourself looking down into one of the Southern Upland glens. But even then, it’s just an icy river far below and a strip of empty roadway, with a silence as deep as when the Stewart kings cleared this ground for deer hunting, or the Armstrongs from over the hill drove away the cattle, burned the small thatched cottages and left a huddle of spear-slain corpses at the field corner.

The Southern Uplands under snow are as big and blank as the screen before an outdoor movie show. What sort of story is going to unfold across the empty whiteness? A romance of the lonesome explorer high in the cold blue air; a grim epic of thigh-deep struggles in the white-out; or perhaps some frivolous bit of fun involving snowballs and an evening mince pie at the Tibbie Shiels Inn.

Rolling – but also rocky

Basalt on the Girvan shoreline, looking over to the volcanic plug of Ailsa Craig (Walk 2)

Like Yosemite’s granite or Snowdonia’s volcanics, the main range of the Southern Uplands is made of one sort of stone. It’s the deep-ocean sludge called greywacke that gives the chunky dry-stone walls, the occasional blocky outcrops, the scaurs (slopes stripped to scree and bare rock) and the cleuchs (deep-cut little stream valleys).

These hills have their rocky moments, but moments only – small stream gullies, broken slopes of stone and scree. But in between the long, rambling days across the grassy tops, short but strenuous half days lead up the small rocky outliers with the big views – Eildon and North Berwick Law; pink Tinto, whose stones colour the roads of Lanarkshire; and seaside Screel, looking across the Solway to England’s Lake District.

And away in the west is something even better.

Here is where the uniform greywacke of the main Southern Uplands is suddenly broken. The grim granite country of the Merrick is unlike anywhere else in the UK. Slabs of bare rock give easy walking across the humps of the Dungeon Hills – easy walking until the granite ends at knee-deep tussocks or a swamp of black peat. A wild goat stands on the skyline, and all below you are silver lochans trapped in the hollows of the rock.

Lists of hills

The Scottish Highlands are dominated by their list of the 282 Munros, the mountains rising above the 3000ft (or 914.4m) mark.

Southern Scotland has none of these. The next category down are called Corbetts. These are hills of 2500ft (762m), with the added requirement of having a clear drop around them of 500ft (152m). The Southern Uplands can boast seven: Merrick, Corserine, Shalloch on Minnoch and Cairnsmore (Section 1 of this book); Hart Fell and White Coomb (Section 3); and Broad Law (Section 4). Add an eighth when we count in the Cheviot, just a few miles into England in this book’s Section 6.

However, the hill list specific to Southern Scotland is the one compiled by Percy Donald in 1935. The 140 Donalds are all over 2000ft (610m) high, but the drop around each can be as little as 50ft (15m) if the hill has ‘topographic merit’. Donald distinguished between ‘hills’ (current surveys give 89 of these) and less significant ‘tops’ (currently 51) – but anyone going after this lot generally ticks them all.

The final listing to consider is the so-called Marilyns. These are hills, however low or high, that have a clear drop of 150m around them. Thus all Corbetts are by definition Marilyns. But so are lowly Grey Hill at Girvan (Walk 1) and Arthur’s Seat (Walk 34). The Southern Uplands’ incised valleys create a grand number of Marilyns – at the foot of Ettrick glen one could get five of them in a day.

Magnificent Marilyns, which might otherwise be ignored because of being below the arbitrary 2000ft or 600m mark, include Ailsa Craig (Walk 2), Criffel above the Solway (Walk 11), Well Hill at Durisdeer (Walk 13) and the Broughton Heights (three of them on Walk 17). Ward Law (Walk 23) and the Wiss (Walk 24) both overlook St Mary’s Loch in the Yarrow Valley. Over in the east, the Marilyn listing takes in the Tweed with Rubers Law (Walk 32) and Eildon (Walk 31), celebrates the Pentlands (two of them on Walk 33), and lingers over little North Berwick Law (Walk 38). These range in height from 606m down to a mere 187m.

Such lists can act as a spur to further hill-going, and take walkers to places they wouldn’t otherwise think of. (Even if, in the event, some of those places turn out to be only moderately attractive.) This book concentrates on the most worthwhile summits, irrespective of altitudes and listings – so that even one of the Corbetts (Shalloch on Minnoch of Galloway) is ignored in favour of lowly (but lovely) Screel Hill above the Solway.

Border reivers

For 300 years, between the Battle of Bannockburn and the union of the Scottish and English crowns in 1604, the Border was an enclave between the two countries where neither king really ruled. Anarchy and lawlessness were convenient for London and Edinburgh as a buffer between the two kingdoms. But for those who lived there, it meant starvation or death by the spear. Family and the local warlord were all that stood between you and the raiders from England – or the Scottish warlord in the next-door glen.

From Nithsdale in Dumfriesshire to Redesdale and the North Tyne, the Border had its own laws, its own ethics, and an economy based on theft, blackmail and kidnapping for ransom. Over moorland and bog, through the passes of Cheviot and the fords of the Tyne, reivers rode up to 60 miles in an autumn night. After a skirmish at dawn with lances and the long-shafted Jedburgh axe they would ride back again with stolen cows, leaving the smoke of burning thatch behind them.

The most feared clans on the Scottish side of the border were the Armstrongs, Elliots, Scotts and Kerrs; on the English, the Grahams, Fenwicks and Forsters. The author’s Turnbull ancestors were a small but effective gang inhabiting Teviotdale. (See whether your ancestors were involved by searching online for ‘reiver surnames’.)

A record of those times is found in the Border ballads collected by Sir Walter Scott 200 years after the event. But they live on also in the defensive pele towers still standing above empty fields. Smaller fortified farms called bastles are in England only; the Scots ones were all destroyed. ‘Thieves’ roads’ still run across the hilltops. Horseback ‘march ridings’ re-enact the battles around the stout, rugby-playing Border towns that stood through the anarchy. And the Border’s harsh history is shown in the emptiness, even today, of the green glens that run south to the Tyne and northwards to the Tweed.

The Covenanters

In the times up to and including the English Civil War, Scotland developed its own Presbyterian form of Protestant religion – one in which spiritual leaders were democratically elected by a Presbytery council of church members. After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 Charles II re-imposed bishops, and with them the king’s authority over the church. Those who rejected king and bishops in Scotland were known as Covenanters. Often they held their illegal church services (‘conventicles’) in remote hollows of the hills.

Covenanters were at their strongest in Galloway, Ayrshire and Dumfriesshire. In 1667 their small army of rebellion marched on Edinburgh and was defeated at Rullion Green in the Pentlands. This marked the start of the Killing Times, when redcoats recruited from the Highlands broke up conventicles with muskets, and arrested, interrogated and tortured locals. Anyone too slow in renouncing their Protestant extremism went to Edinburgh for hanging in Greyfriars kirkyard or, in less serious cases, for transportation to the plantations of the West Indies. The victims responded with what today would be called terrorist attacks, such as the murder in 1677 of the Archbishop of St Andrews. Both sides believed that any cruelties were entirely justified as they had God entirely on their side, while their opponents belonged to Satan.

In 1688 James II (James VII of Scotland) was thrown out of England. The replacement joint monarchs, William and Mary of Orange, were moderate Protestants, and the Killing Times thus came to an end. The Covenanters were in effect the winners – the Church of Scotland is still Presbyterian. Accordingly, the Covenanting victims of the persecution became ‘martyrs’, whose stone memorials are in churchyards and on hillsides all over the Southern Uplands.

For further information on the covenanters see the website ‘jardine’s book of martyrs’ (http://drmarkjardine.wordpress.com).

When to go

Wee Queensberry (Walk 12) looking across Nithsdale to the Galloway Hills

With a maximum altitude of 843m and few fearsome cliffs to fall off, the Southern Uplands can be enjoyed at any time of the year. As on most UK hills, the very best months are usually April to June, when the air is cool and clear, and rainfall is lower than in other seasons.

In high summer, July and August, the hills are slightly busier, although even then they are far from crowded. The grassland is a duller green, and the air is warm and hazy. Long days allow you to imitate, if you wish, the tremendous hill crossings of the Border reivers, and quiet summer evenings can be every bit as lovely as the crispness of spring. Midges do haunt the wooded glens, with Glentrool below the Merrick and Kielder Forest in Northumberland being as afflicted as anywhere in the Scottish Highlands. However, open hill slopes and farmland glens are usually midge free.

Autumn weather can be tiresome, with occasional brisk, windswept hill days sparkling within weeks of grey rain like the hill lochs among the Galloway bog. As the range stretches from coast to coast, one end may well have better weather than the other. However, the lack of roads and through-routes doesn’t aid any last-minute shift from New Galloway to North Berwick.

Winter hill-walking here can be a special experience, with its huge and solitary empty spaces. But snow cover is unreliable. Some winters are almost snow free. Others fail to achieve any freeze–thaw cycle, with deep drifts that will rarely have been trodden down by any earlier walkers. In the occasional years when it comes into condition, the Grey Mare’s Tail (see Walk 21) has ice-climbers queuing into the night for its frozen splendours. The steep north and east faces of Merrick can be a crampon-wearer’s playground, with some actual winter climbs in the Black Gairy crags. But while revisiting the walks in this book, my best winter day just happened to be in the small-scale Pentlands (Walk 33).

The Mountain Weather Information Service provides daily forecasts for the Scottish, English and Welsh mountains. It happens to be based in Galloway’s Glenkens, so its specific ‘Southern Uplands’ forecast is no afterthought, but at least as carefully prepared as those for higher and busier bits of hill elsewhere. See www.mwis.org.uk.

Transport

The Southern Uplands are approached by way of Glasgow, Edinburgh or Carlisle. Air travellers could touch down at Glasgow and Edinburgh, as well as Prestwick or Newcastle. Within the area, the main transport hubs are Dumfries, Galashiels, Hawick and Berwick-upon-Tweed. Few local buses are helpful to hillwalkers; convenient car hire is at Carlisle, Dumfries and Berwick.

For general information on transport in Scotland, contact www.travelinescotland.com, 0871 200 2233. Details of local transport, by area, are given in Appendix B.

Rail

Both East Coast and West Coast main lines pass through the Southern Uplands, but their former stations among the hills have closed. Only the side line Dumfries–Glasgow has useful stations on it (for Section 2 of the guide). For more details contact www.scotrail.co.uk.

Bus and coach

The main towns have useful bus services (with long-distance routes to and from Newton Stewart). However, the minor A-roads and byways serving the hill-walker have infrequent buses or none at all. School bus services are absent at weekends and during school holidays. Main-road services stop at intermediate points only at the discretion of the driver.

This guide is designed to offer readers the area’s best walks. However, not all these are accessible by public transport. Bus services that might be useful to walkers generally include the 101/102 Edinburgh–Dumfries via Thornhill/Moffat, which gives access to many Southern Upland walks (Stagecoach West Scotland, 01292 613500). This and other services are listed by area in Appendix B.

Where a walk in this guide has useful, regular public transport to within a mile or so of the start, this is noted in the information box at the start of the walk. This applies to Walks 1–3, 11, 13, 14, 27–29, 31–34, 38 and 39.

Accommodation

The Borders Region is very well served with hotels and B&Bs, and they’ll be found in all the small towns throughout this book. ‘Country house hotels’, aimed at fishing and shooting enthusiasts, are particularly comfortable (and expensive!) and are used to muddy boots and dogs. B&Bs on existing long-distance paths (Southern Upland Way, St Cuthbert’s Way, Border Abbeys Way) are also walker-friendly and are listed on the paths’ websites and accommodation leaflets.

Hostels and bothies

The Scottish Youth Hostels Association (www.syha.org.uk) still runs a handful of hostels in the Borders; most are closed in winter. There are also a few independent hostels (www.hostel-scotland.co.uk). The area has many bothies – simple unlocked shelters with no facilities. They are occasionally unavailable during work parties or closed by vandalism; consult www.mountainbothies.org.uk.

Details of hostels and bothies in each area covered by the guide are given in Appendix B.

Tourist information and other facilities

For general information see www.visitscotland.com and www.discovertheborders.co.uk. Year-round information centres are located in Dumfries (01387 253862), Peebles (01721 723159) and at Princes Street, Edinburgh (0845 225 5121). Details of local tourist information contact points for each area covered by this guide are given in Appendix B.

The small towns of the area have been largely self-sufficient since the reiving times – they are well served with pubs, cafés, shops and petrol stations. A few parts of the area, such as the Galloway Hills, have no nearby town; for them, notes on local facilities are given in Appendix B.

Maps

The mapping in this guide is based on the Ordnance Survey’s Landranger series at 1:50,000. However, anyone walking in the hills needs to be able to see a larger area of land than the small extracts on these pages, so as to be aware of escape routes and neighbouring glens (in case you come down the wrong side of the hill). It is recommended that walkers take with them a paper map sheet (or electronic equivalent).

The 1:50,000 Landranger mapping covers the area of this guide on sheets 66 (Edinburgh), 67 (Duns), 72* (Upper Clyde), 73* (Peebles), 74* (Kelso), 76 (Girvan), 77* (Dalmellington), 78* (Nithsdale), 79* (Hawick), 80* (Cheviot Hills), 83 (Newton Stewart) and 84 (Dumfries), with the starred sheet numbers being more important.

The area is also covered on the OS Explorer maps at 1:25,000 scale. Their main advantage is in showing fences and walls, along with much extra detail in the valleys. Against this, they are bulkier than the Landranger maps and considerably less clear to read. Refer to the box at the start of individual walks for the relevant sheet numbers.

While either scale of Ordnance Survey mapping is good, the mapping by Harveys is even better on the ground that they cover. Their maps are specifically designed for walkers and are beautifully clear and legible, mark paths where they actually exist on the ground, and do not disintegrate when damp. Their 1:25,000 Superwalker ‘Galloway Hills’ covers the main range, but not Cairnsmore of Fleet; the 1:40,000 Superwalker ‘Cheviot Hills’ covers the book’s three final routes. Harveys have also mapped the Pentlands and Edinburgh. If a Harveys map is available, details are given in the box at the start of the walk.

Compass and GPS

Grouse-shooters’ tracks, such as this one below Garroch Fell (Walk 12), often give easy going between the hills

A compass is a very useful aid in mist, even if your skills only extend to ‘northwest, southeast’ rather than precision bearings. Magnetic deviation is about 4° west. This can often be ignored; otherwise, to convert a map bearing to a compass one, add 4. GPS receivers should be set to the British National Grid (known variously as British Grid, Ord Srvy GB, BNG, or OSGB GRB36).

Safety in the mountains

The Ettrick hills – Capel Fell seen from Croft Head (Walk 19)

Safety and navigation in the mountains are best learnt from companions, experience and perhaps a paid instructor; such instruction is outside the scope of this book. For those experienced in Snowdonia or the Lake District, these hills are easier going, but can be a lot more remote.

The international mountain distress signal is some sign (shout, whistle, torch flash or other) repeated six times over a minute, followed by a minute’s silence. The reply is a sign repeated three times over a minute, followed by a minute’s silence. To signal for help from a helicopter, raise both arms above the head and then drop them down sideways, repeatedly. If you’re not in trouble, don’t shout or whistle on the hills, and don’t wave to passing helicopters.

To call out the rescue services, phone 999 from a landline. From a mobile, phone either 999 or the international emergency number 112 – these will connect you via any available network. Reception is poor along the hilltops; at the hill edges, it’s a matter of luck whether the stretch of glen you’re looking down at has a phone mast. Sometimes a text message can get through when a voice call to the rescue service can’t – pre-register your phone at www.emergencysms.org.uk.

Avalanches

The Scottish Avalanche Information Service’s website (www.sais.gov.uk) doesn’t cover these less-frequented hills, but it and the fell-top report for the Lake District (www.lakedistrictweatherline.co.uk) can give general indications of conditions. Snow build-up is usually less than in the Highlands, and slopes are not as steep. Even so, avalanches do happen. Greatest avalanche danger arises during heavy snowfall and for a couple of days afterwards on moderately steep slopes facing away from the wind. So after snowfall from the southwest, east- and north-facing slopes may be at risk.

Using this guide

Walks in the guide are grouped into six local areas. A box at the start of each walk summarises key information, including start/finish points, distance, ascent (and maximum altitude), maps and an estimated time for the walk. The box also gives details of the terrain, parking/facilities and any route variants. A summary of the walks appears in Appendix A to help you select the correct one for you and your party.

In the route description, a distinction is made between vertical and horizontal distance – ‘600m’, for instance, indicates an altitude or height gain, and ‘600 metres’ indicates distance along the ground. ‘Track’ (rather than ‘path’) refers to a way wide enough for a tractor or Landrover. Points of interest along the route are highlighted, and key navigational features that appear on the accompanying map are shown in bold.

Appendix B gives local information arranged by area, including tourist information, useful guidebooks and available facilities, including accommodation. Finally, a glossary of Scots terms in Appendix C should help you unravel some of the area’s mysterious and poetic place names.