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Cycling in the Scottish Borders: Galashiels, Innerleithen, Ettrickbridge, Selkirk & Tweedbank (Scotland)

May 27, 2018 by Maria Fernandez

Cycling in the Scottish Borders - www.simonking.bike

Scottish Borders ride: map & data

© OpenStreetMap contributors
Total distance: 48.42 mi
Total climbing: 1424 m
Total time: 07:57:54
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About 50 miles, 8h from 10.30 to 18.30 – average 6.2 mph overall (or 10 mph whilst moving)

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When we got up this Sunday morning, Edinburgh was engulfed in a thick haar. The forecast was for a bright blue sky, but the sun was nowhere to be seen.

Arriving in the Scottish Borders

Still, we headed for the station on the bikes and got the train to Tweedbank, a small town in the Scottish Borders.

We were hopeful this would be another beautiful May day.

We didn’t have to wait long. Twenty minutes before we got to Galashiels the sun came out, and it never left us all day.

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Cycling in the Scottish Borders - www.simonking.bike

10.35 – Leaving Galashiels

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Click to see the photo gallery
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Our plan was to do a loop of the Scottish Borders. We’d seen some of the towns before, but never all in one trip.

Galashiels is a commercial centre with a population of about 15,000.

In 1969, like many other places around the UK at the time, Galashiels had its train station closed. In September 2015, after years of campaigning, the line was finally reopened.

We’ve used it plenty of times ever since, with and without the bikes.

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Cycling in the Scottish Borders - www.simonking.bike

11.02 – Leaving the A707 for a prettier road

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From Galashiels we headed for Innerleithen, another familiar place.

Cycling in the Scottish Borders - www.simonking.bike

11.37 – Heading to Innerleithen on National Cycle Route 1

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On a field by the path we bumped into this cute little guy. There were three or four of them, but the others were busy with their early lunch or shooing away the insects.

This one seemed happier with a photo session.

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Cycling in the Scottish Borders - www.simonking.bike

11.46 – A very friendly pony

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Arriving in Innerleithen

Northwest of Innerleithen there’s a 7stanes mountain bike trail. When we got to the town, there were mountain bikers everywhere.

For once, there were other people around less pristine than us.

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Cycling in the Scottish Borders - www.simonking.bike

12.00 – St James’ Catholic church in Innerleithen

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By now we were both getting hungry.

It was tempting to hide from the blazing sun in the local pub, but there was a Jamaica ginger cake waiting for us in the panniers.

So we tootled along on Tiger and Bumblebee, our bikes.

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Cycling in the Scottish Borders - www.simonking.bike

13.30 – Riding past the Gordon Arms Inn

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Everything tastes so much better when you’ve been cycling for several hours.

I’m sure those cheese and onion pasties we’d brought wouldn’t be that thrilling on a sedentary day. Fortunately, hunger makes you unfussy.

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Cycling in the Scottish Borders - www.simonking.bike

13.34 – Looking for a shady lunch spot

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Sheep & us in the Scottish Borders

After lunch, we pressed on and stopped to contemplate this bucolic scene with sheepfold.

Sheepfolds are ancient dry stone circles, one of the oldest types of livestock enclosure. Like the rest of us, on this glorious afternoon the sheep and lambs were happy to roam around in the sun.

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Cycling in the Scottish Borders - www.simonking.bike

14.25 – A sheepfold with no sheep inside

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We continued for a while on the B709, a quiet road with fairly good tarmac that’s reasonably wide for the occasional car.

Actually, it felt more like a highway compared to the paths we often end up on with the bikes.

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Cycling in the Scottish Borders - www.simonking.bike

14.50 – On the idyllic B709

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At Tushielaw we turned left and took the B7009. The sign at the junction said “Selkirk”, but we planned to stop first at Ettrickbridge, a village we’d visited in August 2016.

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Cycling in the Scottish Borders - www.simonking.bike

14.57 – Taking the road to Ettrickbridge, at Tushielaw

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There was a surprisingly small number of bikes on the road.

It’s a mystery how very few cyclists we usually meet, even on a spectacularly sunny day like this.

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Cycling in the Scottish Borders - www.simonking.bike

15.23 – Looking Southwest at the Ettrick Water

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Arriving in Ettrickbridge

We got to Ettrickbridge dying for a pint. Simon went into The Cross Keys pub and came out full-handed.

Hiding under the parasol, we drank two pints of fresh orange and soda, and a pint of non-alcoholic beer. By now anything tasted better than the dreaded rehydration tablets we’d been drinking all day.

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Cycling in the Scottish Borders - www.simonking.bike

15.58 – Back at a familiar place

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We’d stayed at The Cross Keys bed & breakfast a couple of years ago for two nights.

I found it a most entertaining place. It’s sort of run by a chaotic manager who reminded me of John Cleese in Fawlty Towers.

I’m glad it’s been able to stay in business for our comeback.

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Cycling in the Scottish Borders - www.simonking.bike

17.07 – Having a short break outside Selkirk

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Arriving in Selkirk

From Ettrickbridge, we continued on the B7009 to Selkirk, Sir Walter Scott’s town.

This time I refrained from taking yet another picture of the Scottish writer’s statue, and took one of Mungo Park’s instead.

Apart from having a peculiar name, Mr Park was also a Scottish explorer of West Africa. According to Wikipedia, he was the “first Westerner known to have travelled to the central portion of the Niger River”.

In case you’re curious, the inscription on the statue says that Mungo Park was “killed at Boussa on the Niger Africa 1805”. He was in his thirties.

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Cycling in the Scottish Borders - www.simonking.bike

17.24 – Selkirk – Statue of Mungo Park, a Scottish explorer

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We lingered around in Selkirk for a little while, and then decided to go for the 18.45 train to Edinburgh from Tweedbank.

We hadn’t done the Selkirk to Tweedbank route on the bikes before, so we weren’t sure we’d make it on time.

And so, we raced back along the river Tweed. I couldn’t stop to take any snapshots for posterity, but I caught a fleeting glimpse of beautiful Abbotsford.

Sir Walter would have loved the view.

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I took all the photos with the Panasonic.

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Filed Under: Blog, Day ride, Scotland Tagged With: Cycling

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