We both survived the night without getting bitten. The facilities at the site were limited as it was geared up for caravans and camper vans, but there was a small kitchen with a kettle.
Another sunny day, two in a row now, it won’t last!
Our route takes us out of Byrness along the Pennine Way, a steep climb but we are rewarded with some fantastic views. We pass close to the Otterburn firing ranges.
After about 2 hours of climbing we reach the Scottish border, it’s not marked where we cross it, so we only have GPS and the map to go by.
Just after we enter Scotland we leave the Pennine Way and head cross country, fortunately we find the path we planned to follow and it was well used.
We eventually reach Dere Street, an old Roman Road, which was the main road into Scotland used by the a Romans between AD78 and AD211.
As we turned onto the line of Dere Street we saw two ‘born again bikers’ pulled over where the road went through a ford. One of them walked through the ford nearly slipping over. This piqued our interest as there was a perfectly serviceable footbridge. We watched as he planted a ‘Go-Pro’ camera in the bank on the opposite side of the ford. It was clear he wanted to film himself riding his very large and shiny new Ducati motor bike through the ford. Given he had slipped walking through the ford we thought it might be worth sticking around to watch what we thought would be the inevitable accident. On the one hand we wanted him to get his action shot of water spraying up as he swept through the ford but the devil in us knew he was going to get wet and end up on his arse in the ford together with his bike. We didn’t have the heart to film or photo it.
He lined up, gunned the engine and at a moderate pace went for it and with great elegance the bike went from under him and deposited him in the middle of the ford in about 6-8 inches of water. Assorted bits of bike and luggage summersaulted into the water. We did our best to keep straight faces and feign concern for his welfare, like you do. Steve ran up and recovered assorted bits and helped him right the bike. They are very heavy especially when your footing is wet cobblestone in the bottom of a ford. Fortunately not too much damage apart from pride and being watched by two strangers.
We asked for a photo. They sheepishly agreed and gave us a limp wave. The other biker was clearly more sensible, he was on a lovely Triumph. We didn’t hang about to see what he did. After a suitable distance we had a good laugh.
Dere Street takes us off the high moor and down into more arable and mixed farmland.
We continued to follow Dere Street into Jedburgh, along a mixture of tracks and minor roads to our campsite, a Camping and Caravan Club Site.
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