Читать книгу The Southern Upland Way. Scotland's Coast to Coast trail онлайн

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If you do not have the time available or the energy to walk the entire SUW as one expedition, then break it down into two or more sections. The best point to split the route in two is at Beattock/Moffat at the end of Stage 7. Here, there is good motorway (M74) access, and bus transport readily available north towards Glasgow and Edinburgh or south to Lockerbie and Carlisle, from where transport connections home are plentiful. The western half of the SUW will take approximately 8 days to accomplish, but longer if time is spent at the various places of interest along the route, which is always the recommended way to walk a long-distance trail. At a later date, you can return to Moffat/Beattock to walk the eastern half of the SUW, soon leaving Dumfries & Galloway and crossing the entire Borders region to the North Sea on the east coast. This eastern half, less rugged than the west, takes about six days of walking.

Those people living in southern and central Scotland and in northern England could walk the SUW in its entirety as separate day walks or two-day backpacks over as long or as concentrated a time period as desired. For example, travel to Lauder, take an early bus to Melrose and walk the short Stage 11 to Lauder the same day; or travel to Dumfries, take an early bus to St John’s Town of Dalry, and walk the long Stage 4 to Sanquhar over 2 days, perhaps using the bothy at Polskeoch. The SUW’s five bothies are well placed for such a programme, occurring within each of the four really long stages that could not be covered in a single day whilst fitting with public transport.