I am wearing in my new walking boots bought a couple of weeks ago, they are Mammut Tetons and so far are feeling good. The weather has been beautifully sunny all last week so we decided to take a picnic and have an afternoon stroll along the Harthope valley. We parked the car at Cary Burn Bridge and walked along the road to have our picnic beside the river.
The little burn was just at the right level for paddling, and as we ate our lunch a couple of Chaffinches flitted backwards and forwards through the trees, waiting for us to finish so that they could eat the crumbs.
The ultimate pre-packed picnic food - hard boiled eggs from our own hen's eggs.
After our picnic we turned off the road up a track, a little way along Ben noticed this run along the side of the bank, we thought it must be where the rabbits go.
Ben tried to investigate but he was a bit too large to fit through!
A bit further along the track crosses the stream a few times and then the stream becomes the track for a few metres before the track goes away from the stream up the hill and onto the open moorland of the Cheviots.
It was at this point that the battery ran out on Kez's camera.
We continued on up the hill to the top of Cold Law and then followed a grassy track down the other side back to the car. This track was quite steep in places which led to a lot of running and sliding all the way down.
The whole walk not including lunch took about an hour and a half and was approx 4 miles long. Just right for a sunny, spring Sunday afternoon.