Back to Langholm–Tansy, Naze, Mid Hill and Whita

Li Yang decided she wanted to come with me to Langholm, so orf we jolly well went in the knipemobile (showing my age , here…) . The journey had significantly fewer roadworks than my last trip to Langholm and we arrived in just a bit under two hours…. and the day was turning sunny and warm…
We wandered through the park (very lovely) and joined Gaskell’s Walk, a Buccleuch Estate footpath which heads up by Wauchope Water through woodland with blackberries (nom….) and thence by Becks Farm along squishy paths to the Glencorf Burn – a bracken-fest with barbed wire to be crossed and, ultimately to the summit of Tansy Hill 328m


Tansy Hill has only juncus for shelter against the breeze drifting off the Solway Firth, but has cracking views over said Firth to the Lake District Hills, blue in the distance. Here, we lunched.
A contouring route took us around to Naze Hill 331m – a very similar lump to Tansy, in fact. Anybody intending to walk these lovely hills should note that a) they’re very very quiet and those out for a session of  thinking-time, of peace and quiet and some of that “me” time stuff, will find the ideal spot; and b) there are few tracks or paths and the going is quite rough in places.

Some fence-handrailing brought us to Mid Hill 327m which has a trig at 326m, but the summit is on the SW side of the fence. Here, we met a walker (!) – a “senior” lady with a lurcher dog, out for a sort of reccy. We had a long chat. Her dog leapt back and forth over the fence and made friends with LTD. There was much tail-wagging and sniffing of the naughty parts (I’m referring to the dogs here obviously).
There’s an unmapped local path on the trig-point side of the fence; one of those paths that are a complete mystery to walkers who don’t know where they are in the first place and it can be rejoined from the “wrong” side of the fence by following the fence downhill to a gate. From here’ it’s easy to follow back to the fleshpots of Langholm.

As a sweet course, we bagged Whita Hill 355m  on the way home (through Newcastleton to Kielder: a shorter route home which takes a bit longer than driving on the A69/A7)
I’d been up Whita Hill before, though, so only LTD got the tick. Li Yang doesn’t really bother about ticking hills – she’s more interested in the mileage – which, in this case, was eleven miles.
Whita Hill has a memorial to poet Hugh MacDairmid and a huuuuge memorial to Major Sir John Malcolm – a pillar of the British Empire and all-round good egg, according to the inscription on the side of the obelisk.
The hills immediately North of Langholm are very attractive, specially when sunlit and seem from the Mid Hill area – and it seems likely that there will more visits to Langholm for trundles in this area, although how I can fit this in this year is a puzzle at the moment – my diary is full and it’s a bit far for short winter days. Next spring, though, when the larks and pipets are noisy in the sky…….