Day 10 - 26th July 2002

The Youth Hostel courtyard

Next morning Tim headed to Tesco's (supermarket) early for the makings of breakfast so those who wanted could visit the Castle. Unfortunately they found it shut till 10am and we decided to hit the road. It was hard to know what to expect today as Tim couldn't remember much by way of hills on the road through the Southern Uplands, but that was in a car and there are certainly plenty of hills in southern Scotland! At least the weather was better, cool and overcast again.

The so called "first house in Scotland"

The first decision was to detour 4 miles to avoid the A74 by heading north to Longtown and east to Gretna. Though cycling is allowed on the A74 I wouldn't advise it! In Gretna we were finally in Scotland and picked up a real bike route. We'd heard that the old A74 had been converted to either bike track or existed as a very quiet road parallel to the new highway and it proved to be a great ride. Gretna is the tourist trap around here, famous for the weddings of eloping English couples as Scotland's laws on marriage were more liberal than those across the border (and the blacksmith was licenced to perform the ceremony), but we were soon on peaceful bike route 74.

Scottish sunbathing: in warm clothing!

Having eaten well we quickly passed Ecclefechan (no-one took up Tim's challenge to pronounce that one) and Lockerbie before stopping at a small store in Johnstonebridge where the sun appeared and we enjoyed a pleasant half hour eating and lying in the grass outside.

The French (historic Scottish allies) helped build the bike track

From here we climbed to Beatock summit, now that was a barely noticable climb! All the time we stayed close to the new A74(M) but enjoyed almost traffic free conditions (where half the old divided highway/ dual carriageway was still a road), or stretches where only part of one carriageway had been left purely for cyclists or walkers.

Mark repairs a flat by the highway

We arrived too late at the motel on the A74(M), even sending people ahead when Mark ran into flat tyre problems, so we had to grab food at the Burger King (luckily getting in ahead of most of a huge group of Territorial Army soldiers coming off 7 coaches) and backtrack to the Abington Hotel. It's a very pleasant place and has a convenient yard for bikes but very much overpriced; however we were able to enjoy a comfortable evening and a couple of pints in the pub. All of us except Mark that is. We discovered that Mike had popped 7 spokes late in the day (he hadn't noticed the wobble!) so Mark settled down in the laundry for a long evening of wheel repair, managing to get into the bar, still covered in oil, around closing time.