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Day 18: Innerleithen to Melrose

Updated: Aug 5, 2021



I can't possibly paint most of what I noticed today:


The calming, comforting smell of honeyed heather.

The buzzing bee-presences, invisible in the honeyed heather.

The warmth in my nose as I walk the path through the buzzing bee-presences invisible in the honeyed heather.

The memories stirred by the warmth in my nose as I walk the path through the buzzing bee-presences invisible in the honeyed heather.


My shiver as a butterfly brushes my lip (yes!), and my flinch as a bee bombs my bare arm.


The tongue-taste of the moist and must of bracken, of mossy dry stone walling, of close-grown pine trees in the forest's dark dryness, of a just-vacated sheep byre, of water weed on a slow straight of the river.


The bright mouth-tingle of a handful of wild strawberries and the lazy, furry warmth of wild raspberries. The dark sweet melt of black chocolate, the zing and slither of fresh orange flesh. Hot coffee, my welcome mid-afternoon energiser.


The sting of my feet after mile after mile after mile. The ahhhhh as I dangled my stinging feet in the River Tweed. The sting, and the ache, in my feet, with yet more miles to go, and their relief, my relief, in the hot bath on arrival.


I can't paint all of that, can I?


But simple, concrete things can be depicted, and today all day I was grateful for well-placed signposts, and the map.


18 miles



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