We continued for miles along gently undulating moorland with excellent views in all directions over the Borders hills and across to the Eildons. We eventually reached The Three Brethren – three massive cairns that mark three county boundaries for the Common Ridings. It was too windy to stop for lunch so we continued on over a “slightly muddy” moorland path to Broadmeadows Youth Hostel. We espied a picnic table on the front lawn so decided to stop for an elegant lunch. Later, as we rose from our repast, the table overbalanced and almost pitched three of our number to the ground. It just goes to show how dangerous hill running can be.

We continued on down to the road at Yarrowford and had to endure almost 100yds of road running before turning off towards the Minchmoor Road. This is a delightful grassy drove road dating from the 13th century. It rises gently for miles back up to the Southern Upland Way near Minch Moor. After we re-passed the Cheese Well there was a long downhill run all the way back to Traquair. As Shane later said, "brilliantly runnable from beginning to end". The day was rounded off by a stop for refreshment at the Traquair Arms in Innerleithen. As we later emerged, refreshed, we discovered that we had inadvertently missed the one rain shower of the day. More photos on Alan's site here. According to his GPS it was 17 miles, 3600 ft of climb,

Nigel Rose