{"id":8959,"date":"2025-10-12T21:59:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T20:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/?p=8959"},"modified":"2026-01-26T22:05:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T22:05:20","slug":"borderline-fun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/borderline-fun\/","title":{"rendered":"Borderline fun"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By which I mean “fun around the border”, not “barely any fun”. The border in question was the England\/Scotland one, specifically (for the first two days at least) from Cockburnspath in the north down to Berwick-upon-Tweed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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High above the shoreline on the coastal path.
\u00a9\u00a0Haydn Williams 2025<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The path runs for 48 km, although no-one online seems to want to quote a height gain for it. It wasn’t as undulating as a lot of other coastal paths we’ve been on, and we made good time for the first 22 km of day one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Looking north from Pettico Wick.
\u00a9 Haydn Williams 2025<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We were heading for accommodation at Eyemouth, and the last five kilometres from St Abbs did drag a little bit on tired legs. Prior to that it was lovely though – very quiet, and some nice rocky geography happening for the entirety of this stretch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sadly Becs picked up an injury, so the next morning I ran the remaining 21 km to Berwick. This is definitely the less-scenic part of the path, running for quite a long way alongside the railway!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A less-exciting stretch of the coastal path. The seaside is over the rise to the left.
\u00a9\u00a0Haydn Williams 2025<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, it was an excellent training run and a nice reminder that my legs do actually still turn over when I really need them to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After that we had another night in Berwick, exploring the town walls (very nice, but I couldn’t really give my seal of approval as a Welshman, owing to the fact that they were built by Edward I) and going for a sandy wander too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The beach to ourselves at Cheswick Sands.
\u00a9\u00a0Haydn Williams 2025<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Stereotypical sand dunes shot.
\u00a9\u00a0Haydn Williams 2025<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From there we moved over to spend the rest of the week at Kailzie Gardens<\/a>, between Peebles and Innerleithen. We essentially spent the entire time visiting a variety of castles\/country houses and comparing their tea rooms. I therefore don’t have any exciting pictures I’m afraid. There was just one rainy day, on which I hired an e-bike, which was great fun. I covered almost 50 km in four hours, including getting to the amazing trails at Glentress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Believe it or not, this was one of the ‘worst’ trails at Glentress.
\u00a9\u00a0Haydn Williams 2025<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It made me realise how much I miss my e-bike, particularly since Santa Cruz now make the Vala, which is essentially an electric Bronson. I grudgingly gave it back though, aware that I had made a terrible mistake and my life would have been easier if I’d never slung a foot over it. [Update: Reader, I bought one]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually it was time to head home, which was done via Grey Mare’s Tail waterfall (although not all the way because the top was in cloud!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The steep climb towards Grey Mare’s Tail.
\u00a9\u00a0Haydn Williams 2025<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In summary:<\/strong> we really liked the Borders. Everyone was friendly. Cake was cheap. Bicycling was fun. Huzzah.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By which I mean “fun around the border”, not “barely any fun”. The border in question was the England\/Scotland one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8966,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-outdoors","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}