Aye be whaur extremes meet

The Last Polar Bears tour reached its southernmost point on the tour this weekend.

We cycled the 20 miles from Lockerbie on Saturday to arrive on the gorgeous town of Langholm, nestled among the rolling hills of Eskdale in Dumfries and Galloway.

Langholm is famous for many things, but with so many poetry aficionados on the Polar express, we were excited to explore the legacy of Hugh MacDiarmid, the Scottish poet and renaissance man who was born here in 1892 (his real name Christopher Murray Grieve).

He is buried here, too. And high above the town where you are able to see across the Borders and beyond, to Cumbria and Northumberland, there is this stunning memorial to the man and his work, created in 1985 by artist Jake Harvey.

"I'll hae nae haufway hoese, but aye be whaur
Extremes meet - it's the only way I ken
To dodge the cursed conceit o' bein' richt
That damns the vast majority o' men."