After a large breakfast at Malcolm’s B and B in Melrose I set off on St Cuthberts way.
My first encounter was with a lovely chap who was climbing up Eildon hill to hang a wind chime on the thorn tree where he had scattered his father’s ashes. He made the accurate observation that hills got steeper as you get older.
I retraced my steps from July 3rd briefly when I had walked from Jedburgh to Melrose but was soon off on pastures new as I followed the Tweed. The Tweed is a fast flowing river and provides a steady rush of sound to accompany you as you walk by.
I reached my wild camp point in the evening on a green lane near Jedburgh.
I made camp and at about 1am my tent collapsed on me again.
This was if you wanted to trace it back the fault of the Germans. Not the entire nation but the group I had met on a campsite a few days before. I wasn’t going to tell the story straightaway to avoid embarrassing them or the campsite.
Put simply I was in my tent on the campsite at about midnight when a German lad sat on my tent.
This wasn’t a deliberate act but I never quite got to the bottom of what he was doing near my tent. Whether it was an alcohol induced loss of navigation or just a simple blunder.
Luckily the tent appeared to survive the impact and the German missed me after some hand waving, apologies and laughter from his friends I pegged out the tent again
It was when I took the tent down in the morning I noticed an ominous crack in one of the carbon fibre poles. I put tape around it and hoped that would be sufficient.
Apparently the tape wasn’t sufficient and the tent was now lying on top of me. The pole had snapped and the sharp end had punched through the fly sheet. This was not good. However at least it wasn’t raining.
At 2am it started to rain.