Walking in the Southern Uplands. Ronald Turnbull
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Название: Walking in the Southern Uplands
Автор: Ronald Turnbull
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Книги о Путешествиях
isbn: 9781783621293
isbn:
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
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