Step 1 - Marchmont to Nine Mile Burn

A few years ago I randomly put Sri Lanka into a global mapping app and was amazed to see that I could walk there in 78 days and 5 hours. Sri Lanka is where my father was from and the place to which Robert and I travelled in 1999 on board a cargo ship, my father having taken the opposite journey when he came to the UK in the 1960s. Robert and I got married in Sri Lanka, in a yoga retreat in the jungle on Christmas Eve 1999, a child having suggested the idea 2 days before. We took our daughters back there in 2014 and we're always madly keen to return, finances and the current political situation not withstanding. Before 1999 I had only been to Sri Lanka once, aged 11, when I met the Sri Lankan side of my family and fell in with a crowd of cousins who introduced me to fireflies and plantain chips amongst many eye-popping wonders, after a suburban upbringing in north London where flying ants and Wotsits were more my norm.   

After the 78 day walking revelation, Robert and I got talking about the realities of walking to Sri Lanka. 78 days is presumably non-stop so it would take us at least 3 times as long if not more. We began considering different routes we might take, to avoid war zones and no-go areas. We wondered how we would carry our provisions and Robert fixated for too many months on the idea of us travelling with a donkey (having grown it in our Edinburgh garden)! And we questioned when we would we be able to take this trip, both having full time jobs which we aren't about to give up. We finally hit upon the idea of simply getting on with it, taking it a step at a time and doing it in stages, when time and clement weather allows. So on the 3rd September 2022, 26 years to the day since we first met, we set off on the first leg of our journey - Marchmont to Nine Mile Burn!


It was a beautiful sunny day and we walked via Blackford Hill to the Hermitage, through the Braidburn Valley, up Cockmylane (famous from Robert Louis Stevenson's novel, Kidnapped) to Swanston reaching the foot of the Pentland Hills where we took a short (chocolate) break. From there we went up over Allermuir Hill, along Phantom's Cleugh, bumped into our mate Kevin, reaching Flotterstone in time for lunch. After some major carbs we moved further into the Pentland Hills, scaling Turnhouse Hill, Carnethie Hill, Scald Law, East Kip, West Kip, Cap Law, Monk's Rig, passing the Font Stone and descending gratefully into Nine Mile Burn where good friends met us with a delicious meal and copious amounts of wine.


It was an exhausting day. We'd taken 40,736 steps, walked 23.7 km, had carried our backpacks (very light in my case) and had our two small dogs, Mojo and Duffy, in tow but we'd done it. Back  in our youth, pre-children, we used to take long trips together - Peru, South Africa, Australia - which we referred to as Sim and Bob's Big Adventures. After so many years it feels SO good to start a new one!

                                                             








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