Aug 01, Jedburgh to Hawick

Let me just start by saying that the place where I am staying, a very nice place for the most part, feeds off the wi-fi from the restaurant next door, so you can only get a sort of signal in the dining room.  That is just cheap!  No doubt the owner has a separate connection.  And once we are on the topic, the shower is a mere dribble and the toilet is totally weird, some sort of organic kind of toilet that makes a real racket when you flush it.  But after you mount thee huge flights of stairs, you are in a nice room.  Oh, and the proprietress would not let me check in a minute before 3:00 p.m.  even though "early check-in" was confirmed when I made the reservation, so for an hour and a half, I hung out in the next-door-restaurant where they let me connect to their wi-fi, so I was all set with the zany password when I got here.  

I headed out at 5:15 in preparation of a long day with the detour and that whole river business to worry about. I was so focused on that that I don't even remember a lot about the walk.  It was not exceptional.  What can I say?  There was the large area of ferns that were taller than I am and which were wet, so I got pretty soaked after about 5 minutes.

And there was much very tall grass, also wet:

 

Do you walk beside the field or through the field?

Beside the field.

After the very tall wet ferns and the tall wet grass, there were some less tall ferns, and since they were on the other side of the big hill, they, for whatever reason, were not wet.

I think that hill is a landmark, and no, it was not part of the route, but you do see it for a long time!:

Two walking surfaces merit attention.

One of my favorites:

Because I know that without it, the ground would be very very very boggy.

One I never experienced before:

It was fabric!  Pieces of cotton.  Millions and millions and millions of pieces of cotton. It was soft underfoot and so strange.

I met two pretty horses:

The critical point on the route, five and a half miles or so from Hawick, was Denholm: 

This is where the detour is and where the river path begins, or at least where it used to before the embankment eroded away causing the rather unpleasant detour.  As I got close to the bridge, I saw a woman who was in charge of a gas pump—a gas station with one pump and nothing else—so I asked her if she might give me some help.  She was most obliging.  We went over the detour and I asked her about the river path.  "It is gorgeous," she said.  "Near Hawick, is it precipitous?"  I asked.  "No!" I walk it all the time!  Hearing her say that, I wanted to sing!  Bob Marley will do it for me!

I asked this nice lady, whose name is Wendy, whether, per chance, she sold Magnums, you know, this being a gas station of sorts and all.  No, she did not.  "Before I head off, I am going to take off my jacket," I told her.  At this, she ran off and returned a minute later with a Magnum, for which she refused to accept payment.  

I thanked her profusely, not only for giving me an ice cream from her personal supply but for her advice about the river walk.  That segment turned out to be the best part of the day.

Be wary of what random people post!  As for the barbed wire that this person had to cross lest she fall in and drown:  anywhere where there was barbed wire, you could easily crawl under the wire below the barbed wire, but there was no need to escape a severe drop because there weren't any. 

A willow tree: 

The River Teviot, which is a lot like the River Tweed:

Bunches of birds going bonkers;

Hawick is not an attractive town.  In fact, it is rather depressing.  The only walking route that passes through is the Borders Abbeys Way, as opposed to some of the other stops where at least one other LDP (Long Distance Path) is on the route  In other words there is no catering to tourists here!  No cute little ice cream of chocolate shops with cutesy names.  But there is no derth of class B- supermarkets!