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

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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.