15 May 2011 - Traquair to Peebles
Distance - 7.25 miles
Weather - Sunny
For the whole of this stretch we walked on the B7062, it's not a particularly busy road and so it was OK from that perspective. It would have been nice to have walked alongside the Tweed, but unfortunately there is no footpath. We wandered past the grounds of Traquair House, past its Bear Gates, then had fields either side of us until we did manage to see the Tweed at Cardrona Forest. Cardona village is a huddle of new builds, dominated on the outskirts by the MacDonald Cardrona Hotel, Golf and Spa. The road was then bounded by trees for a while until we reached Kailzie Gardens. They are meant to have a nice tea shop there, but uncharacteristically we walked past without stopping!
We undertook this stretch of the LEJOG on a Sunday one weekend, although it added just 7.25 miles to our overall progress, we actually walked to Traquair and back again, making it a respectable 14.5 mile day's walk. The reason for such a compact section was that we didn't want to combine Traquair with the next stage as it would be too long (Peebles to West Linton is 13.7 miles, meaning a 21 mile jaunt overall) and we didn't want to have to drive two cars down to the Borders from Stirling. It also takes one and a half hours to drive to Traquair and when you add on stopping en-route to drop off a car at West Linton and driving from West Linton at the end of the walk to pick up a car from Traquair, then driving home to Stirling, it all gets a bit fraught!
For the whole of this stretch we walked on the B7062, it's not a particularly busy road and so it was OK from that perspective. It would have been nice to have walked alongside the Tweed, but unfortunately there is no footpath. We wandered past the grounds of Traquair House, past its Bear Gates, then had fields either side of us until we did manage to see the Tweed at Cardrona Forest. Cardona village is a huddle of new builds, dominated on the outskirts by the MacDonald Cardrona Hotel, Golf and Spa. The road was then bounded by trees for a while until we reached Kailzie Gardens. They are meant to have a nice tea shop there, but uncharacteristically we walked past without stopping!
From there it was just over a mile before we reached the outskirts of Peebles. Then about the same distance again, first walking past a small industrial estate, then past various types of houses, before we reached the car park by the Tweed and our car.
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