Author Topic: Borders - Teviotdale - Skelfhill Pen  (Read 6016 times)

mike knipe

  • Veteran Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2872
Borders - Teviotdale - Skelfhill Pen
« on: 21:15:20, 10/02/08 »
Todays walk - I'd promised myself, and the dawg that we'd bag this hill sooner rather than later. Its a long drive but its a smashing area for walkies and unless you live in Hawick, you've probably never heard of this one, which is a pity, cos you're missing out, big time.
The area around the hill appears to belong to the Duke of Buccleuch (pronounced Bukloo). This is a good thing. The Buccleuch estates cover vast - and I really mean VAST areas of the Borders, including forests and grouse moors, and the estates have friendly signs saying "walkers welcome" "keep your dog on a lead" (meaning you can take fido  and  there's waymarked walks and stiles and footbridges and all sorts of walker-friendly stuff.
We (me , alan and the Dawg) parked in the car park (see what I mean) near Skelfhill hamlet, which is just off the A7, a couple of miles South of Hawick.
The first mile or two were on forest tracks, passing what appears to be a boy scout establishment (down,  vicar!) at Alderybar - an isolated cottage and outbuildings. We had some trouble identifying a path exiting the forest which would give us a footing to the bottom of our hill - and neither GPS nor compass could sort it out. It would seem that our path now has trees planted on it - but some shenanigans in forest rides took us in roughly the correct direction and we emerged damply in round about the right place about twenty minutes later.
The next stage was an easy uphill plod for about 2km, climbing 200metres to the 532m top of Skelhill Pen. At  this point we also emerged from a grey fog into warm sunshine and blue skies - a beautiful winter temperature inversion, compete with a fluffy cloud sea stretching away across Southern Scotland.
Skelfhill Pen is a steep cone, leaning ever so slightly northwards and liberally scatterred with angular lumps of scree. The summit is just big enough to contain a cairn, a trig point and  about half a dozen picknickers. Its a remarkable little hill.
It has a fine ridge descending Eastwards, which is how we left the place after our lunch.
We did a little round of Greatmoor Hill and Knowes head and then returned to the fog, where we had to navigate to an old, derelict cottage at Cotterscleuch Shiel, about a mile North. So we walked on a bearing and aimed off to a path South of our target and, just as I was beginning to think we'd got it wrong, our ruin appeared out of the mist.
An electric fence ruined our next bit of navigating and we had to retrace our steps to find a way though - but our next target - a track about half a km North was not too difficult to find.
More forest plodding brought us back to our start.
8 miles and 1600 feet of climbing.
Superb weather and a fascinating hill.
« Last Edit: 11:04:30, 08/03/08 by mike knipe »
Some kind of happiness is measured out in miles

See the blog!  www.northernpies.blogspot.com

 

Terms of Use     Privacy Policy