Day 85 Naked hiking

Today, before I say anything else I would like to reassure my readers that neither Sue nor I were doing the naked hiking.

The day started with a substantial breakfast at the Tontine hotel, followed by a quick trip to Greggs for sandwiches. I forgot to go to the bakery, but we had a surprising number of shortbread biscuits in our room so we took those with us instead. The weather was sunny and we were light-hearted as we set off, up the hill to the Cross Borders Drove Road. The Drove Road was almost as good as the other day. Not too steep, good views, and, wonder of wonders, a bench!

What about the naked hiking? I hear you ask. Well, we had been walking along a forest path and I noticed a hiker coming towards us. I wasn’t looking closely (more concerned with putting one foot in front of the other and breathing to be honest) until he turned round and crouched down and I realised I was looking at bare buttocks. He had stopped to put on a rubber skirt (handy for brambles I should imagine) so that when he met us he was decent. We didn’t look behind us after he had passed.

We eventually emerged from the forest, followed the path across the hills, and forded a couple of streams. We sat on the bench for a while-it was too early for lunch-and enjoyed the view.

We didn’t find a suitable lunch spot for quite some time, but enjoyed it when we did. From lunch, the ground was mostly flat into West Linton but there was quite a lot of road walking to get there. In fact, we seemed to take ages to arrive as West Linton turns out to be a long village. Pretty, yes, a conservation village as well. There were some nice benches, a park, good floral displays, a lot of expensive-looking cars, but, even though there was a pharmacy, no travel-size tube of toothpaste. I’ve had to make do with a regular size as I’m about to run out.

Our pub doesn’t do evening meals on a Monday or a Tuesday but does do pizzas. Mine was the daily special-haggis and onions. The pub doesn’t do breakfast either but there is a deli in the village that opens at 7.30 so we’ll be heading there tomorrow morning.