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27 December 2006

PENICUIK AND ITS PEOPLE

Well, I have had a little more time lately and the route is now at Walking Day 54, which puts me nicely at Penicuik.

I have to say I am looking forward to visiting Penicuik. I have never been there. I have no idea what it will be like. But Penicuik is a place on the map that coincided with my pencil line and it fitted in quite nicely with the mileage for that day (Walking Day 54, that is)

Now – you might think – what sort of reason is there for choosing my route like this, following a pencil scrawl on a map?

If truth be told, I will have been following National Trails for two weeks in Wales, and another two and a bit weeks up the Pennines and then a bit of St Cuthbert’s Way to Melrose, and I just want a break from them. I want to strike out on my own again. So, ignoring really good advice from a couple of my Trail Angels and also Andrew McCloy (the writer of the Land’s End to John O’Groats book) I am heading out from Melrose via Stow to Penicuik, through what looks like to be rather shapely little hills.

That’s the fun of this walk – It will be a Journey Of Completely New Things & Places (The capitals are very important here.)

I’ll grant you, some of the places might not set the world on fire, perhaps Pevsner will be scathing of them, but hopefully the people I meet in them will have it in them to make it a place to remember. This is a walk just as much about people as it is about walking, places to be visited and land to be trodden underfoot.

I have a firm belief that people are generally pretty good – apart from those that nick your car stereo – and even the stereo nickers are usually pretty okay when you meet them in the pub having a game of pool.

When it comes to the on the road blog, I hope you will find me writing about the people I meet as much as the places I pass through. After all, life is all about how we all rub along together, so a walk like this should give me ample opportunity to rub along with quite a few new people. I am quite looking forward to the good souls of Penicuik.

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