![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sloeburn.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/carse1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nWe’d been warned about sheep and wild goats later on, but not the peacocks in Eskdalemuir who seemed fairly oblivious to traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I started to feel a wobble in my left crank, which has been happening recently. It’s a self-extracting crank, and keeps attempting to extract itself. I stopped by the turn off to Ettrick, only to have a short panic that none of the hex keys on my tool were the right size, but happily there was an odd thing that fitted. After that I tightened it as much as I could at each stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>After my Dart to York<\/a> I remembered that I do need to put some effort in rather than just pootling along, so made good progress on the first section to the Beehive cafe in Hopehouse. This was a great place to stop – they’ve definitely done this before, with prompt service, offering to fill water bottles, and great food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A quick stop in Hawick to register on the e-brevt app and have a snack, then to Newcastleton, by which point I was knackered and hungry. I’ve always thought that the place looks odd on a map, and on arriving saw a sign saying it was a planned village in the early 1900s, which explains the layout. Some macaroni pies from one of the local shops were much needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The climb out of Newcastleton was the only one that looked daunting on the map, and it was quite a challenge but I made it without getting off to walk. It went on and on though; there was a nice fast descent to cross the Tarras Water only to have to go back up again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally an as-warned twisty road down into Langholm. This would be a good place to stop in terms of facilities but it didn’t work that well for me distance, so I kept on to Ecclefechan. Not so much climbing now, but still a fair bit of up and down. A visit to a shop and a short stop, and I realised after my early better-than-expected progress I had slowed down quiet a bit was now back on my predicted time and couldn’t hang around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The last section was a loop down to Caerlaverock (I guess to make up the distance), so it was a bit demoralising seeing signs for more direct routes home. I misunderstood the info control and wasted a bit of time stopping at the wrong places, but found it eventually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The final section more or less follows the Nith up to Dumfries (definitely flat now), then hopping on to the shared cycle\/pedestrian path along the river, under a couple of bridges, before an unlikely-looking route ending up little road which goes up to the Church Hall and Arrivee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I hadn’t seen anyone else for quite some time, and on arrival asked if there was anyone else still out. One apparently, so I didn’t even manage to achieve the lanterne rouge<\/em>. That honour belonged to a rider who arrived about 10 minutes later, who’d had a few navigational difficulties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 211 km, 1,983 m climbed, 12 hours 38 mins, 16.7 kph average speed<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 02\/05\/26 A first for new organiser Garry and what a great route. Very quiet roads over moorland passes, nice places to stop, and finishing with a ride up the Nith estuary with a bit of evening sunlight. The first 20 km or so were very familiar, and my parents were waiting at the end of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,21,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audax","category-cycling","category-scotland","category-sloeadventures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sloeburn.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sloeburn.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sloeburn.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sloeburn.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sloeburn.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3051"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.sloeburn.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3087,"href":"https:\/\/www.sloeburn.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3051\/revisions\/3087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sloeburn.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sloeburn.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sloeburn.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n