Biking the Southern Upland Way – slowest ever?

Met @vmgscot on today’s leg from traquair to Melrose. Good effort the pair of you. Did you manage the Melrose bakery?

Our busiest leg of the SUW by far!

The trails between Traquair and Yair Bridge seem very popular with all sorts of folk – families, runners, walkers, horsey types and even a fellow member of our very own STW congregation (Hi @onehundredthidiot, we never made Melrose this time). And a little personal nature highlight for me – seeing my very first crossbill – actually a male/female pair just a few feet away.

First time passing this impressive spot so mandatory pic

Another Hoard coin was found

We have passed a few of these so far on our journey

So our plans to celebrate my 60th birthday down in North Wales this weekend were scuppered by the weather – but that opened up an opportunity to further our quest along the Southern Upland Way. This chilly stage took us from Yair Bridge over to Melrose – it was strange that the SUW seems to make a point of avoiding civilisation yet, here we found ourselves, twisting through the town parks, pathways and backroads of Galashiels, Tweedbank and Melrose.

We opted to return via a short recce of the Borders Abbeys Way (possible future riding) to Lindean then down to Sunderland Hall and back along the Tweed.

Heading away from Yair Bridge

Descending down to Galashiels

With our usual Sunday group ride decimated by Mothering Sunday obligations, we decided to pick up the “Roman Road” section of the SUW from Melrose to Lauder with a slight variation on the return. Found another of the Kists (searching becomes an obsession) and another Hoard coin for the collection – 2 to go.

The biking and scenery has definitely changed since reaching the Tweed Valley – much less “out there” and more rural farmland.

Jill searches the Kist contents for a Tesco trolley token

Climbing away from Lauder

This thread needs a flippin’ Like Button.

agree with matt_outandabout brilliant thread.

OP can i ask what bikes you and your wife ride please ?

It’s worthy of an STW magazine article imo.

Thank you for your kind words Gentlemen.

@ton – for this journey we have mostly used our ebikes – mainly because we didn’t have a clue what the trails might throw at us and, as ageing weak and feeble types, the ebikes allow us to ride pretty much everything rather than substantial chunks of hike-a-bike otherwise. Jill has a 2020 Merida eOneSixty and I have an alloy Orbea Rise and we use them in their lowest “tunes” to eek out battery life.

Might be 2 or 3 weeks before we can get back over for the next section but I am looking forward to seeing the Twin Law cairns.

vmgscot
Full Member
Thank you for your kind words Gentlemen.

@ton – for this journey we have mostly used our ebikes – mainly because we didn’t have a clue what the trails might throw at us and, as ageing weak and feeble types, the ebikes allow us to ride pretty much everything rather than substantial chunks of hike-a-bike otherwise. Jill has a 2020 Merida eOneSixty and I have an alloy Orbea Rise and we use them in their lowest “tunes” to eek out battery life.

fantastic mate, thanks for the reply. myself and the wife are looking at buying a pair of ebikes. this kind of thread is very inspiring. cheers.

Managed to take advantage of the religious weekend and made our way over to the Borders for another leg on Friday. We started over at the small village of Longformacus and made our way back over the Lammermuir Hills to Lauder – turned around and headed back again.

Couldn’t move for the numbers of Red Grouse, Curlews, Lapwings and many other birds taking to the air and the superb visibility gave us stunning distant views.

Twin Law cairns

Bagged another Hoard coin – only one more to go

Nice pictures, often cycle up and around SUW and into Lammermuirs as based in Lauder. No homemade sloe gin in the cairns? Used to be a near by local would put one in for the colder months

Brilliant thread! Thanks 🙂 I’ve done small parts of the route and just got motivated to do some more. Cracking photos!

We opted for a cheeky last minute AirBnB Friday night so we could take advantage of the fine weather for another ride. Returned to Longformacus and headed East on the SUW over to Abbey Saint Bathans (apparently the cafe has recently re-opened so bacon bagels all round) then on to Whiteburn Farm and the site of the old WW1 airfield. Turned about and retraced back to the van.

Only one more ride left (we can almost smell the sea air) but it will have to wait.

Heading away from Longformacus

Robbers Cleugh

Whiteburn WW1 Airfield cairn

This feels like it needs a STW meet up to help you celebrate finishing it. I should do some of this, my parents live in Lauder, I spent three years at school in Longformacus and did a couple of summers working near Abbey St Nathans. I have ridden a little of it from Lauder heading east and I’ve ridden to Inners in the other direction.

@stevenmenmuir – Where was the school at Longformacus – it seemed a very quiet (but affluent) village? I was impressed that they still have a phone box with a working and connected phone inside.

We certainly did a bit more than planned on the recent leg as we bumped into a hiker at the cafe in Abbey St Bathans who we had seen earlier in the day. She explained that she had left a lense up on the trail somewhere so we back tracked up the route and eventually found it a few miles from Longformacus resting on a stile – and have posted it on to her.

We are keeping one eye on the weather and one on our commitments. Hopefully get a couple more snaps and pop our thoughts down on this little low-key adventure.

I also need to ride a bit more of the SUW.
I can almost see one section of it from my house and ride and walk bits of it all the time.
We even use one section of it to walk to the pub.

It was on the corner as you come into the village from Gifford direction. I’m guessing the original building is still there, it’s 40 years since I was there.

Well that was delightful.

Weather looked promising so we jumped in the van early Saturday morning and pootled over to Cockburnspath to complete the last leg. We made a loop – headed out on back roads to pick up the SUW at Whiteburn Farm before an undulating saunter across farmland brought us to an “exhilarating” dash across the A1 trunk road and a climb up through Penmanshiel forest. There appears to be loads of tasty looking steep trails cut in this wood – anybody ride here? A new logging access road suggests they may disappear shortly.

Dropped down through a quiet but steep sided valley, climbed past a sizeable caravan park then onto narrow cliff top singletrack with stunning views of Cove Harbour (and the slightly less picturesque Torness nuclear power station). Final mile headed back inland to finish at the mercat cross in Cockburnspath – no pub, unfortunately, so had to celebrate with half a limp cheese sandwich from the bottom of the backpack.

I’m not fussed about stats but Jill added up the logs off her Garmin watch and our way of biking this coast to coast route managed to rack up 734km and 13500m ascending. For us, it was never going to be about a test of character or pitting ourselves against anything – just a lovely way to see the wilds of Southern Scotland and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

Turned out a lovely Spring day

SUW website says this section is not for bikes – yeah right!

Practicing navigation techniques – in case the Garmin fails

Giant biker or tiny harbour?

And so it ends

Excellent ride – and thread with great pics! inspiration for a possible SUW trip in September…..maybe…..

Penmanshiel forest. There appears to be loads of tasty looking steep trails cut in this wood – anybody ride here? A new logging access road suggests they may disappear shortly.

The road has cut right thru the majority of the trails TBH, the tops and bottoms are still there but IMO not worth bothering unless you’re close by.

I swum in Cove harbour last autumn. Lovely but brrrrrr!

Well done! Enjoyed reading this and reminiscing of the time we did it (11 years ago).

We did it in 3 stages over the space of 14 months so I don’t think your efforts are the slowest:D

Epilogue – forgot to say that we managed to locate all 13 kists and their contents.

It’s a fun challenge but can become an obsession (ask Jill) – we cycled one stage twice in the same day to find one and spent 45 minutes hunting at a location (it was hidden behind a fallen pine bow).

I’m considering giving this a go as a bike packing trip, maybe at the end of summer.

Photos look great 🙂

I’d hoped it would be suitable for the gravel bike but maybe would be better off on the MTB.

Not sure how many days I’d need to do it in either, I’d hoped 4 but just started looking in to it and think it’ll be slower going than that.

A mountain bike would be better than a gravel bike (I reckon) unless your bike handling skills are far better than mine. Though to be honest that’s not difficult.

A hardtail, or short travel full suss would be fine. Other than a few steep downhills there’s not much that’s really technical. Just lots of bumpy grass tracks where I think you’d want a bit of suspension, just for comfort, as it’s a long distance.

I ride the SUW around St-Mary–Lammermuirs section a lot and while it’s possible on a gravel bike (esp. the Melrose-Lauder section), an MTB would be a far nicer solution.

@phil5556 – timely question as a local acquaintance was looking for input from us as they have been asked to design a “gravel” SUW – a bit like the Kirkpatrick C2C they were involved in popping together.

My opinion is that the “easy” East stretch from Moffat to the coast at Cockburnspath is do-able on a gravel bike by those who can tolerate a tiny amount of Rough Stuff Fellowship style of riding.

The West half has a lot more tougher terrain – with a few sections of long wet soft (bordering on boggy) terrain that would mean pushing a loaded bike so slow going. We did these sections on eebs which made them OK for us but they could possibly be bypassed on back roads to make a far more enjoyable “gravel” experience. – I think that is what the new gravel SUW is going to do.

However, this is based on our own cycling prowess and we are in our 60’s and weaklings so it may not be as tough for you youngins.

Thanks for that, that might be enough to put me off tbh!

I’m happy to carry / push my bike if it’s too steep but the thought of miles of bog & overgrown path doesn’t appeal. I reckon you doing it in sections is probably the best way. And I don’t like riding on the road if I can help it, so bypassing by road isn’t ideal.

I’ll go back to my plan of working out how to ride back home to Ayrshire from D&G, there must be a mostly gravel / off-road route I can string together 🤔

@phil5556

Where you starting (D&G) and heading to (Ayrshire)?

We are up in East Ayrshire but one of the good things to come out of the Covid times was we spent a lot of time exploring all the hills on our eebs looking where tracks and trails went so if we can be of help at all just shout. The constant windfarm projects and new pylon runs are changing the available “gravel” routes almost daily – many not on maps or even satellite images.

I’m in Troon and don’t really mind where I start tbh, ideally with a train station.

I like the idea of getting the train down there and then pedalling home over a couple of days. I know there’s plenty of routes in Scotland, would be nice to be able to do something close to home though.

I’m sure there will be loads of tracks but like you say, if they’re not on the map yet it’s difficult to plan unfortunately.