Border HuMPing

I meant to do much more than this, but, in the end, an icy road up past Kielder, some slow traffic and pausing too long over the porridge meant I could only bag two of these fine little HuMPs just South of Hawick.

But, as Kevin Shakespeare once wrote in his brotehr's English homework book "There's many a man in England still at work who would think himself accursed that he was not here" Kevin;'s brother Eric used some of the phrase in his book about something or other. Or was it Bill?

Anyway, it were a fine and frosty day and just a bit icy on the tops.

First bag was Pike Fell, 400 metres - which sported a really cracking surprise view of the middle bit of Scotland when breasting the ridge. Some hills in the distance ? Lowthers possibly??) had snow on their tops.

Bag two was Penchrise Pen, a cone-shaped...er....cone, with a hill fort on top, in the shape of a motte and bailey, and two fortified settlements at the bottom, which stood out really well in the low sunshine.... and two lads banging fence posts in with a big fence-post banger-inner. A small version of this would be useful for tent pegs...

Me and superdawg lunched on the North side, out of the nithering gale wot was blowing straight out of the Reykyavick Asda Freezer section and right up me buffalo (yes, it was that cold)

As the sun set, we scooted off home to tell our mum all about what had happened.

Note for anybody stuck in traffic jams today - The A7 was completely empty as for miles and miles and miles today.... what fun....what a fab group of hills.

A HuMP, by the way, is a hill with 100 metre prominence.