walk with me

so here I am....blipping from a lay-by next to St Mary's Loch in the Scottish Borders..

even this road is a kind of adventure - wild goats, snow, timber trucks. I parked at the picnic site near the monument to James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, and set off to walk the 7 miles around St Mary's Loch in an anticlockwise direction. The path on the Eastern shore of the Loch follows the Southern Upland Way and is a real delight to walk. The path on the Western shore has been more recently constructed to avoid walking the road, and it is often rough and muddy, rising up to the old St Mary's Kirkyard which is not a place to linger on a day like today (or any day, really).

The car park was not a place to linger either, with signs forbidding overnight parking, the cafe closed for renovations and the Tibbie Shiels Inn looking dead as a  doornail, so I drove a short way up the road to a lay-by with a parking sign and made myself a hot drink. Its dark now and I've drawn the curtains of the campervan and I very much hope that no-one disturbs me during the night :-)