Читать книгу Walking in the Southern Uplands. 44 best hill days in southern Scotland онлайн

13 страница из 58

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.