Fri 4th June - Day 49, Peebles to the A70 (19 miles)

I notice the light changing earlier now, it was 4am today.

There is no campsite on my route today but I had an offer from Shaun & Claire to be met, given a bed for the night and returned in the morning.

We arranged to meet at 16:30 so there was no urgency getting started this morning but I still ended leaving early at 06:50.

I followed a drove road for a couple miles out of Peebles then cut across White Meldon Hill to the picnic spot at the corner of the forest.

There was no footpath now so I walked into the hills along the side of the forest to Flemington Burn.

I was able to pick up a path here (the path marker said "Tweed Trails") taking me between Drum Maw and Hag Law to Damside on the A701.

It was 5 miles of road walking now, the B7059 into West Linton where I stopped for lunch, then a minor road out into the hill to Baddinsgill Reservoir.

There was a drove road from here going north through the Pentland Hills, I needed to slow down a bit so I took this section easy. At Harperrig Reservoir I took a footpath directly to the rendezvous point, a car park on the A70, 5 miles SW of Balerno, getting here at 16:20.

It has been a dry, cloudy day with a strong cold NW wind and with hardly any sun I needed two shirts on.

850 miles completed.

Shaun had a repair kit for my rollmat so we put it in the bath filled with water to identy where the puncture was. It was that small it only needed a smear of glue over the area to fix it. Just in case it happened again he said I should take the repair kit with me.