Walking the Cross Borders Drove Road

Tuesday 21 October 2025: West Linton to Peebles, 13 miles

There’s a useful seating area just behind the Gordon Arms and its bus stop for a final kit check etc before setting off, with a Co-Op just down the road for any essential provisions.

Though as mentioned above the village is nice enough, it’s otherwise something of a trudge along a B road until the Road heads up to Broomlee Hill. Dropping down, the route as marked on OS heads directly to a deer fence; not good, but I spy a gate higher up. The trail then takes a wider loop than OS suggest to Halmyre Lodge.

The next few miles see the crossing of the A701 and some rather so-so lanes and paths to avoid walking beside it. At last, beyond the unexpected housing estate of Damside, we head properly uphill onto the moor, on a guaranteed stretch of former drove road, between the low hills of Drum Maw and Hag Law. As we enter forestry, drizzle sets in; nothing too serious though.

A mile out of the forestry, waymarking disappears, perhaps removed, on a brief road stretch, and the farm lane we need flourishes a ‘private’ sign. Private for cars, we reason, though it’s hardly friendly and we’re on the lookout for an angry farmer. But when we turn off we’re soon contouring round Hamilton Hill on a super little stretch, Peebles now in view. There’s quite a bit of it to walk through, but it’s a nice little town, so no hardship.

Wednesday 22 October 2025: Peebles to Bowhill, 18 miles

This is quite a substantial day by any reckoning, with something like 3300ft of ascent. Both height and distance are split more or less equally in two by the small village of Traquair, so that’s the lunch stop sorted out.

Before we begin, I fix our taxi pick up for 5.15 at the General’s Bridge by the A708. The task now is not to be too early or too late. We’ve got a decent day for it though, just right for autumn with light winds and sunny intervals.

It’s a steady climb up out of Peebles, more or less relentless but on good tracks and never too steep. We summit on Kirkhope Law, at 1726ft / 537m the summit of the trail and its one true top. We’re on the eastern edge of the Manor Hills, their high point Broad Law (2760ft / 840m) well over ten miles away SW.

From Kirkhope Law, the trail takes an anti-clockwise loop and heads us down towards an estate known, imaginatively, as The Glen. Before we get there, we veer thoughtlessly right rather than left at a fence junction but correct ourselves before infringing on the boundary of a house called Birks.

Soon, we’re on a minor road for a mile, then join the B709 for a further mile to Traquair. Here we join the Southern Upland Way, a walk that both Graham and I have done before, so it sparks a few memories.

After lunch at the green in Traquair, we set off on the second, and slightly steeper, climb of the day, up onto Minch Moor. There’s a short stretch near the top where the SUW and Road diverge, our trail this time taking a more open route on what was presumably the old drove road. Not far from where the two routes recombine, there’s a path up to the summit of the moor (1860ft / 567m), which Graham takes, while I remove an awkward stone from my boot. He’s up and down in 15 minutes, having had better views than me.

A mile further on, we leave the SUW behind and begin the long descent to the Yarrow Water. It’s a lovely path, green but not boggy, singletrack, and best of all we’re heading down. After a while we spy, in the glen to our left, what seem to be tarmac tracks; strange, we think; probably for logging, but overkill. At a bench high above the glen, we meet one of these tracks. It’s cinder, not tarmac, part of a 10km collection of accessible paths created, at some expense it seems, by the local Broadmeadows Estate.

It’s heading in the right direction, so we take it. Soon, the waymarked route wants us to go over a now-barred fence with a locked gate; maybe not a good idea, lest it end in barbed wire. The cinder path leads us down to Yarrowford, though not in the way that OS direct, but it hardly matters.

There’s a few yards on the A708 before we can enter the Bowhill Estate. We’ve got more than an hour to walk the two miles to our taxi pick-up, so there’s no rush. These estate tracks are tarmac, or mostly – in staying on the tarmac, we miss a turn and find ourselves at the dramatic ruin of Newark Castle. Certainly worth killing time here. Later, we meet a voluble dog walker who might possibly have had a dram or two; again, no problem. So there’s no long wait at the General’s Bridge.

Thursday 23 October 2025: Bowhill to Hawick, 15 miles

Cab back to the bridge and a bit further through the grounds of Bowhill (though with no view of the great house, nor the Duke of Buccleuch who owns it).

Soon, we cross a wobbly bridge over the Ettrick Water and join the Borders Abbeys Way, which has come in from Selkirk. We’re mostly coincident with this now until a few miles out of Hawick, and its waymarks supercede ours. There’s a steady climb up through forestry, which signage later tells us is still the Duke’s estate, before a road takes us to the settlement of Wolrig.

Now, according to the OS map, the Road stays on the road by a rather circuitous route to the Ale Water, while the Way shaves off some distance by taking more direct tracks. This is a no-brainer to us, and it also accords with the semi-official gpx. This is apparently the Thief Road. Alas, a fair part of it is through a golf course, though there’s not a single golfer in evidence today.

Over the Ale Water, it’s time for the last significant climb of the trail, the Eildon Hills tiny pimples to the north. There’s some forestry, but much of it has been cleared, and we have a gloriously grassy undulating track with good views all around.

We drop down a bit, to a point where the map shows the Road and Way splitting, though there’s no sign of a waymark on the gate that the map bids us take.

Still, we go though it, and we soon veer up to a robust farm track. I’d noticed this before we had come to the bifurcation; it bore a Hawick Horse Society waymark, but nothing for the Road. It’s a bit weird therefore why the Road dips down and takes a rough path before finally joining the track.

We head W then SW, but our view turns southwards. Are those hills the Cheviots, and with them the English border? Surely they are. Graham and I have both walked the Pennine Way, its last stage a descent from The Cheviot, and we can even make out the ridge that the PW takes.

After a mile on the track we turn towards Hawick, on grass again, until we hit road. Along the road, miraculously, we see our first bull waymark since Middlestead. It heads along a pretty green path, exactly in the opposite direction to Hawick.

I’d suspected this might happen. The gpx ignores it, and heads on road to Hawick. What it seems to be is a spur path, linking the Road to the Romans and Reivers Route, which runs from Hawick to the village of Ae north of Dumfries. We ignore it too, traversing a mile of increasingly suburban Hawick, before what we assume is the end of the route at the pedestrianised Old North Bridge. Next task, find pub for celebratory pint.