Moffitt to Kielder Forest.

August 3, 2011

The morning was cloudless and it looked as if it would remain sunny all day. I set off at eight o'clock while a few people were awake and stirring about the campsite which was full of campervans, cars and tents, it being the Summer holidays: good thing though the campsite had a special rate for non-motorist campers like me of six pounds.

The road away from Moffitt was tough first thing in the morning: going up steeply for quite a bit; then dropping down to climb once again steeply, and up and down a few times more before settling into a steady climb up the valley. The fields were enclosed by stone walls, many of which were yellow striped, having been closely cropped by the mower and had round-bales in them some of which were rapped in black plastic. Further up the valley narrowed with rough rocky pasture slopes on the inside, and boggy meadow on the other side, but with lush mature hay, wild flowers and bracken by the roadside, then further still, pine forest.

After fourteen miles I reached Saint Mary lough, a body of water which fills the valley for three miles: mirroring the hills and cotton-wool clouds.

It had gone half ten and as there was no more climbing, I sat on a bench at the roadside leaned up against a stock fence, beside a wooden stile over which led to a walking trail up the steep hillside. While eating a cheese sandwich and waiting for water to boil to make tea, I noticed a weathered sign which read, St Mary's Kirkyard. It was meant to point up the trail but had been blown around and pointed across. Curiousity got me so after tea I set off up the trail through chest high bracken. There was nothing which indicated how far it was, not until I scrambled up and crested the last bit of steep incline and saw over the bracken to a stone wall enclosed square plot with a lone Ash tree in it, which could only be the graveyard meant on the sign below at the road. It was a few hundred metre more, down and across a stream, then up to an iron gate in the wall.

Sheep lying on top of a grave rose and scattered when I entered and gravestones stood at all angles: some had fallen over completely and lay flat on the ground. Many were so weathered by time that the inscriptions were no longer legible. The oldest that I could make out was that of a Sheppard that had died in the year 1777. Another which read: Adam Bryon once tenant farmer in Anwi..,then the inscription is illegible and I could only make out March 27th 1823 at the bottom.

I reached the hilltop town of Selkirk by lunchtime and like the farmhouses in the countryside on the way there, the houses along the main street were in tasteful brown stone: local building material which bends in. Indeed the country is unspoiled by tasteless eyesore bungalows which have ruined much of Ireland. After lunch of soup and a bun in a cafe, I crossed the street to a bank opposite to change Scotch and Northern Irish sterling bank notes to English sterling bank notes. The woman bank clerk laughed when I mention it was because Is crossing the border to England adding "nay, cunne nei use no but English dar.....".

Leaving town a sign stated that I was on a "Historic Border Route", and another: Harwick 11 miles. It was a busy A road where I didn't think so much of those that had past before me as I could only think of remaining safe amid the din of constant traffic; though there was a half metre wide shoulder, otherwise it would've been too dangerous. The road also went straight, rolling down and straight up and over open country where mature white grass in rough pasture at the side waved in a gentle breeze.

In Harwick I stopped at a supermarket to stock up on food and when I came back out with my bag of shopping, two stout men that stood out because of the high visibility vests they wore and the collection boxes they rattled, collecting for Dog Rescue, had stopped there good work and were taking a keen interest in my bike and trailer. They asked me questions. They were especially interested in how I control it going down hill. "Tis no made for fat boys lek yuh Rabb"; one said nudging the other.

After Harwick I was still on much the same A road but as the traffic had taken another road out of town, I had the road more or less to myself. And later reaching a place called Castlebronbridge, I turned onto a B road where there was no traffic at all. I had reached the start of Kielder Forest, my gold for the day and as it was now six o'clock, I turned onto the first forestry road I came to, cycling up a longish hill through the forest until I came to a wide turning place, where I got the tent up at once as it was still wet from morning and hoped it would dry.

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