West Linton to Almondell & Calderwood Country Park

14 August 2010 - West Linton to Almondell & Calderwood Country Park

Distance - 14.9 miles

Weather - Overcast

After parking one car at the Almondell & Calderwood Country Park, we drove the other over to our starting place at West Linton. It was a nice place with a Post Office and Co-operative providing the opportunity to buy some provisions for our walk.

Buildings near Baddinsgill Farm

This chunk of the LEJOG was taking us across some of the Pentland Hills to the outskirts of Livingston. We started from the town centre, crossing the A702 by a pub called the Gordon Arms and then followed a little lane called The Loan - which had posh looking houses in large plots on each side of it. Just past a golf Club House, we took a right turn to join Agricola's Roman road. This was a little bit better underfoot than the Roman road, Dere Street, which we had met in the Borders. After a left turn at Stonypath Farm, we made our way round the bottom of Faw Mount, which was followed by a good deal of faffing around over footbridges and some wet ground until we reached the road at Baddinsgill Farm. Looking at the map now, I'm not sure why we did all this, as if we'd have kept straight on at the Club House we could have got to exactly the same place on a perfectly adequate lane! Maybe we didn't want to miss Faw Mount!

Highland Cattle on the Thieves Road

A little way past the farm, we caught glimpses of Baddinsgill Reservoir on our right; however, we continued on round the base of Muckle Knock hill. After this we joined a track called the "Thieves Road" and followed this, carefully avoiding the very large Highland cattle that were grazing along it - usually in the most inconvenient places!

View down to Harperigg Reservoir

We kept on the Thieves Road right up to the Cauld Stane Slap. The Thieves Road is an old drover's road and the name possibly reflects what Victorian society thought about this group of people. It was used to move cattle from Falkirk to Peebles. Later, Victorians used the track to travel between the railway stations at West Linton and Kirknewton. A "slap" is a pass and on anything but a summer's day, I bet it's a remote and bleak place. After the slap there was a good view of the Harperigg Reservoir and the path started to descend. The area around Harperigg is a nature reserve and had a lovely new wooden bridge over one of the streams - so new, it still had sawdust around it! There were also some great views of the Forth bridges, Arthur's Seat and Edinburgh from here.

The Thieves Road ended when it met the A70 at Little Vantage. The End To End Trail book suggested that we continue over Corston Hill, which might have been only 348 meters high, but was a bit of a challenge - first to find a way over the barbed wire fence and then a way through the boggy and uneven ground to the top. The views were quite nice up here and we descended following some old boundary stones down to an unclassified road that led past Selm Muir Wood. We followed this road all the way to East Calder (pronounced "codder") and then made our way to the Almondell & Calder Country Park We had of course parked the car at the most distant of car parks, but it was no hardship to walk through the pretty grounds.