Finally it rained; it did not pour, but you had to suit up anyway. One of the challenges is figuring out what to wear under your raincoat. If you aren't insulated and become cold, you are in a bad way because while it is raining you can't take everything off to add a layer (or two). I went with a wind shirt under the raincoat. After several hours, this was too much, so take off poncho, take off waist pack, take off back pack, take off raincoat, take off wind shirt. The gaiters and rain pants stay on. Then, put on rain coat, put on waist pack, put on back pack, put on poncho. By about noon, the rain stopped...for the day.
Most of the walk was kind of a slog. Granted, nothing looks as good in the rain as it does in sunlight, but the scenery was partly moors and partly vast farm tracts, and lots of roads in between.
Topless trees!
¡Qué raro! (How odd!)
I am trying to think of a descriptive for this!
There are always sheep!
When you are walking for quite some time and it feels brown and grey, it is truly exciting to see a patch of purple, which is, apparently, rosebay willow herb—I did that thing with the camera on Google to find out what this flower is, having seen quite a bit of it up to now:
Here it is up close:
It really brightens even the greyest day.
More sheep
Part of the route went through a golf course. Walking on a golf course is the BEST! Hard surface, short grass, very very nice!
And, on a rainy day at 8:00 a.m., you do not have to worry about flying golf balls, or if you do, I didn't.
Just as nice, is walking through a pine forest:
Not so nice is walking for long stretches on asphalt:
The stage was about 14 miles, and when I reached Selkirk, I realized that my hotel was a mile away! (There is really only one place to stay in the town itself, and there must have been a reason why I did not book it.) I was given early check-in for the princely fee of £15, but not until 1:00. Since I arrived too early—I had really pushed hard—I walked to the grocery at the far end of town to pick up some supplies, which, normally I don't like to do; I prefer to change to sneakers and exchange the pack for a small backpack, but I wanted to make sure I could get a decent loaf of bread! Get there at 3:00 and likely you are out of luck.
The room at the hotel is quite nice, and, I was told, I have a garden view:
I was really excited when the guy told me there was a frig in the room. The frig can hold exactly two bottles of water. That punctured my balloon. I was pretty much done for the day, but it was only 2:00 when I had "gotten sorted," and I really had wanted to see the Sir Walter Scott Courtroom, so I schlepped the mile there and saw it. It was a room with placards and the depiction of a hearing:
You can see Sir Walter presiding:
I had not known that he was a judge, but he was, for thirty years, and it was a job that paid the bills, but of course, he loved to write. Scott 's poetry and novels were very popular in Europe, especially. Not a great fan was Charles Dickens. He felt that Scott's glorification of war in Marmion, e.g., was influential in the South's wanting to go to war (as in the Civil War). Now that is something to ponder. A lot of this exhibit echoed the stories told at Abbotsford—see post from Melrose—which is just ten miles, or so, from here.
One interesting "fact:" Some of the people who passed through Sir Walter 's court room became models for characters in his novels.
Scott is not the only famous citizen with ties to Selkirk.
Right near the bridge:
Wee, sleekit, cowran, tim'rous beastie, O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
But those lines were written in Ayershire, in 1875, not in Selkirk, so no plaque for that poem here!
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