Walking the Border

by Ian Crofton

  As I sat resting on what appeared to be a floodplain, the map told me that I was actually in a little patch of Scotland, stranded on the south side of the Liddel. This aberration came about in 1861, during the construction of the Waverley Line. As they laid the track up the south side of the river, the engineers and navvies came to an impasse below Liddel Strength, where the river ran right up against a hundred-foot escarpment. The engineers had a choice. They could either move the river or move the cliff. They opted for the former, dumping great piles of sandstone blocks in the Liddel, so diverting its course away from the cliff and providing a causeway for the railway. The Border, however, remained where it was. But instead of running up the middle of the Liddel, it now – for a short stretch – ran along the south bank.

  The anomaly came to light in 2002, when Riddings Farm, just up the line, came on the market. The English solicitors doing the conveyancing advised the purchaser that they would not be able to deal with the two-acre patch beneath Liddel Strength. And so a Scottish lawyer had to be engaged to complete the purchase. The anomaly also means that the owner of Riddings can fish his bank of the Liddel on a Sunday – except for this short stretch.

  I continued on my way. The old line here must have been double track, for in front of me spread a wide lawn covered in daisies, with primroses lining either side. A roe deer bounded ahead of me, before darting into the woods. The pastoral here was matched with the post-industrial: metal posts alongside the track, broken drainage pipes, abandoned concrete shacks once used by railway workers.

  Riddings turned out to be a rather grander affair than the average farmhouse. It was more of a Victorian suburban mansion, or perhaps a manse, with walls of dressed red sandstone. Nearby stood the remains of Riddings Station, which had become part of a cow byre. The platform was grown over with brambles.

  The Waverley Line has been closed for the best part of half a century, so there has been plenty of time for nature to reclaim its territory. The last passenger train to pass through here was the Edinburgh Waverley to London St Pancras sleeper on the night of 5th January 1969. It was two hours late reaching Carlisle. Protestors objecting to the closure had blocked the line at Newcastleton. Among those arrested was the local minister, and it was only the intervention of Borders MP David Steel, who was travelling on the sleeper, that secured his release.

  As I looked around the deserted station, a large tractor roared up beside me. The driver pulled on the brake and gave me a look. Was I on forbidden ground?

  Always best to play the daft laddie in these circumstances, I find, so I asked him which was my best way ahead. He was glad to enlighten me, and so we fell into conversation. It turned out he’d just recently taken over Riddings Farm. I could tell by his accent that he was from the other side of the Border, so I asked him what it was like coming from the Scottish side and farming on the English side. He said he already had two farms on the Scottish side. But he’d always had his eye on Riddings. Its free drainage, he said, made it prime arable land. ‘You can grow maize to the height of this tractor,’ he assured me.

  I said I’d never seen maize growing this far north in England – let alone in Scotland. Because I’d heard there was a wee bit of Scotland on this side of the Liddel, where they moved the river.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘God, you know more about it than I do.’

  I told him I’d been researching. I was writing a book.

  ‘Are ye?’ he asked.

  I said I’d read about the previous owner needing two sets of solicitors, one Scottish, one English, to do the conveyancing. He’d found the same thing. ‘You’ll never believe this,’ he said, ‘but it was absolute luck that this solicitor we went to, there was a girl there who might be thirty, thirty-five? But she can do both English and Scottish. She can tie people in knots. Absolutely right what you say, you need the English and Scottish law. Ye’re well read up on the thing.’

  I told him I’d been staying at a guest house in Gretna, and that the landlady used to live round Penton.

  ‘Aye, that’s right,’ the farmer said. ‘She did.’ It seems everybody knows Christine.

  I told him I was making for the Bridge Inn. He knew it, had just passed it. ‘There’s some big cars there,’ he said. ‘Moneyed people.’ I became aware once more of the state of my trousers. Maybe I’d have to sleep in an outhouse.

  ‘Ah, but you’ll have a good place at the Bridge Inn, you’ll be pleased with that,’ he continued. ‘Eat meat, don’t eat fish. Do you like fish?’

  I assured him I liked both. I wondered, was it his meat they served at the Bridge Inn?

  ‘No, no, it isn’t. But the meat is good. But you have what you want.’

  It turned out he not only had three farms, but also half a dozen houses. And he’d just finished building a retirement bungalow for himself. I asked whether it had a good view. ‘Depends whether you want to look at gravestones,’ he said. The new bungalow was next to the churchyard.

  ‘I’ve always admired this farm from over there,’ he said. ‘It’s a helluva farm.’ Then he started up his tractor. ‘You’ve probably got another’s hour’s walking,’ he said. ‘Nice speaking to you.’

  I could see it was time to go. Blether was all very well, but there was business to be done.

  A little beyond Riddings Farm is Riddings Junction, where a branch line once cut north across the Liddel Viaduct up Liddesdale to Langholm. The Liddel Viaduct today represents the most impassable barrier between Scotland and England. Rivers you can swim, mountains and moors you can trudge over, but at the English end of the Liddel Viaduct there is a ten-foot-high fence made of spike-topped steel railings. The fence extends some way either side of the viaduct, over the drop.

  It was at Riddings Junction, on 8th January 1969, that British Railways invited the press to a ceremonial track-lifting ceremony. The closure was final. Now, on the fence, there is a sign:

  Highways Act 1980

  The British Railways Board

  hereby give notice that this way

  is not dedicated to the public.

  Just beyond the viaduct, a locked gate, topped by barbed wire, barred further progress up the old Waverley Line. There was another sign:

  PRIVATE PROPERTY

  NO RIGHT OF WAY

  NO TRESPASSING

  So near to Scotland, I felt the right to roam enshrined in Scottish law might extend a little across the Border. So I clambered over the gate and walked on. Trespassing always struck me as a very odd sort of concept. Keep out. We don’t want your sort here. My land. Not yours.

  The ‘PRIVATE PROPERTY’ was very pretty – open woodland, the ground carpeted in bluebells, wild garlic and dog’s mercury. You’d think the landowner would want to show off the beauties of the place to a wider audience.

  At one point I passed an old abandoned caravan. Green algae had begun to stain its white exterior.

  It was getting late and the woods were growing gloomy. So I was relieved to clamber up the side of a cutting into the light of the evening and onto the road that leads up to the Bridge Inn. In the distance I heard the chimes of an ice-cream van. Then it roared past. Palozzi’s Ice Cream. It was an out-of-the-way place for an ice-cream van. Mr Palozzi must have a vast territory in this sparsely populated area to sell enough ice-creams to make a living.

  Down the road there’s an attractive bridge over the Liddel that takes you into Scotland. Far below, as you stand directly above the Border, is Penton Linn, a dramatic stretch of the river that sent the authors of the Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1882–5) into paroxysms of purple prose:

  Stupendous rocky precipices, which fall sheer down to the bed of the stream, and wall up the water within a narrow broken channel, along the Scottish side have a terrace-walk carried along a ledge, and affording a view of the vexed and foaming stream, lashed into foam among the obstructing rocks; and they are fringed with a rich variety of exuberant copsewood. In the middle of the cataract rises from the river’s bed a solitary large ro
ck crowned with shrubs, whose broken and wooded summit figures majestically in a conflict with the roaring waters during a high flood.

  These days the place is celebrated not so much for its exuberant copse-wood or its vexed and foaming stream, but rather for the challenge it throws down to the local youth. I was told all about it by a Geordie gentleman who lives in Penton House, just up the road. I chatted to him by his gate, as he tended to his garden.

  ‘The locals, the young ’uns, I’ve seen them queuing up,’ he told me. ‘They jump off that bridge. Did you have a look over?’

  ‘I did,’ I said.

  ‘It’s quite steep,’ he said. ‘There was a lad killed there before we came here. But he didn’t die with hitting. He drowned. The trouble is there’s so much rubbish underwater – prams and so on. So you can get trapped. Especially when you’ve had a drink or two at the pub.’

  Apparently the oldest bit of Penton House is a medieval keep. The bits I could see looked like they could be seventeenth century. My informant, Mr Thompson, had come to live here a few years previously, along with three or four other families, all related. Although a Geordie, his ancestors originally came from Dumfries.

  ‘My grandfather moved to Newcastle to work,’ he explained. ‘His father did not like the English at all. They fell out arguing.’ The father used the commoner Scottish spelling of the name, without the P. The son who’d gone to Newcastle put a P in his name.

  ‘To annoy his dad?’ I asked.

  ‘To annoy his dad. Real animosity,’ Mr Thompson laughed. ‘He was a joiner by trade, and he stayed and settled in Newcastle. So we’ve been to Dumfries to have a look round, see the Thomsons on the graves.’

  ‘There’s quite a few there?’ I asked.

  ‘With a P and without it. Mostly without it. I suppose we’re all related eventually.’

  ‘We’re a’ Jock Tamson’s bairns, as they say up there.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Mr Thompson also told me the story of his visitors from Peru. He’d found them wandering around outside the house. One of them presented his card. ‘Pablo Penton’, it said.

  ‘Apparently his great-great-wayback-grandfather lived in this area,’ Mr Thompson told me. ‘And he got a baronetcy or whatever. When he came, I thought this was a con. He was with his lawyer. Actually he was in oil. He’d done very well, he’d just come to see where his ancestors came from.’

  Thankfully it was only a few hundred yards up the road to the Inn. I could see it glowing white in the evening sunshine.

  As I stumbled heavily laden into the bar, a man said, ‘That’s one small rucksack, isn’t it?’

  ‘Luckily it’s quite light,’ I said.

  ‘You’ve got to say that, haven’t ye?’ the man said.

  Tony the publican was Australian. His wife Linda was the chef. She’s originally from Ulverston, on the Cumbrian shore of Morecambe Bay, but now her father and brother farm the neighbouring farm in Penton.

  I told him I’d got a room booked.

  ‘You have,’ he said.

  I asked for directions to the outside tap. ‘I had a close encounter with some slurry,’ I explained.

  ‘Round the back,’ he said. ‘There’s a hose there.’ I must have smelt that bad.

  Refreshed, after a fashion, I returned to the bar. It being Friday night, it was in full swing. A local lady had had a disaster with her Aga. ‘It’s all gone and thingy blasted carboned it all up, so I can’t light it. So I said, Well, I’m going down the pub. I’ve got no cooker. Eh, I says, what do you want for supper? He says, Oh well just get summit.’

  ‘Two fish and chips for a tenner?’ Tony suggested.

  ‘Well, I might have lasagne,’ she said.

  ‘It looks absolutely delicious,’ Tony said encouragingly.

  A local at the bar was having none of it. ‘Waste of good mince, that pasta shite.’

  A younger man, also with a Cumbrian accent, was sporting a dark blue Scotland rugby strip. I asked him why. He told me he’d been to Dundee University. And before that his dad took him to see the rugby. ‘It’s a lot closer to Murrayfield to watch Scotland play than it is to Twickenham,’ he explained.

  I asked him whether it was not a bit dispiriting supporting Scotland, given their performance in recent years. ‘Yeah, it’s a very poor choice in that sense,’ he said. ‘But it’s an easy choice in terms of getting there.’ He was a dairy farmer’s son. And now he too was a dairy farmer, working the farm next door.

  My meal, I was told, was ready. I was ushered through to the west-facing conservatory, full of evening sun. Having taken advice along my journey, I decided against the fish, and the lasagne. But Linda’s steak turned out to be all that it had been cracked up to be.

  Later, in my room above, I lay on the bed staring through the window westward to the sunset. There were trees and then fields and then a low hill and then distant hills silhouetted in pink. Above them mauve-grey clouds streaked across a sheet of palest blue.

  An owl flew past my window, telling me night was on its way. I drew the curtains, turned out the lamp. Outside the simmer dim slowly faded in the northern sky. Midsummer was less than a month away.

  FOUR

  WASTE GROUND WITHOUT HABITATION

  Penton to Scotch Knowe

  Kyrsopp is a small becke, and descendes from the wast grounde called Kyrsopeheade. It . . . is from head unto foote without habitacion.

  – Thomas Musgrave, letter to Lord Burghley, 1583

  Day Two: Saturday, 25th May 2013 It was a glorious sunny morning as I strode down the hill towards Penton Bridge. The wind had died, there was not a cloud in the sky. It promised to be hot later. As I turned right down a minor road parallel to the Liddel Water, all was quiet, apart from the birdsong.

  I’d heard in the pub the night before that there were sheepdog trials taking place on Linda’s brother’s farm at Haithwaite. I’d be going right past it. I met two women walking in the opposite direction. I asked them if they were going to the sheepdog trials.

  ‘Nope,’ one said.

  ‘You’ve had enough of sheepdog trials?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said.

  And they continued on their way.

  The entrance to the sheepdog trials was through a gap in a hedge. I was greeted by a farmer. I asked him whether he was in charge. ‘Well, I’m takin’ yer money,’ he said. It was only a pound. He pointed me to the marquee where refreshments were being served.

  In front of the marquee I was greeted by a big man with a big smile and a big, bald head, leaning on a crook. He introduced himself. ‘Welcome,’ he said. ‘I’m Ian Imrie, the chairman of this . . .’ He waved his hand, taking in the marquee, the spectators, the course in the sloping field above us, where a woman was whistling and calling. A dog darted about. Three sheep seemed not to have much of a clue what was expected of them.

  I asked Mr Imrie whether he was the judge. No, he said, the judge was sitting over there in a car. ‘Have you seen a sheepdog trial before?’ Mr Imrie asked me. I said I hadn’t, so he explained the course in detail, what was expected of dog and handler.

  When I looked at the programme of events for the day, I saw that the thing that Mr Imrie was chairman of was the ‘Penton Discussion Group (Affiliated to the International Society)’. The judge was called Michael Peugniez, so perhaps that’s where the ‘International’ bit came in. Or perhaps because the Group had members from both sides of the Border. Mr Imrie himself had a Scottish accent. His farm, he told me, was at Harelaw, on the Scottish side of the Liddel.

  I asked Mr Imrie why it was called Penton Discussion Group. It all goes back to 1943, he told me, when the Ministry of Agriculture set up local groups of farmers so they could be shown how to grow more. Since then the Group, which meets at the Bridge Inn, has diversified and welcomes talks and discussions on all kinds of topics. ‘Jolly friendly group,’ Mr Imrie said.

  He showed me the refreshment tent. I said I’d better not, I’d never get going again.
‘Oh, go on. Never mind your walk,’ he said. ‘Just go back to the Bridge Inn the night.’ I was tempted, but I had a schedule. I had to get to Carter Bar the day after tomorrow. I had a rendezvous with my sister. She had the food for the second part of my walk.

  Another man took over the role of explaining the dog trials. He bemoaned the fact that working sheepdogs are dying out. It’s all quad bikes these days, he said.

  It was a regret I heard expressed on other occasions on my Border wanderings. A few months later I found myself at an agricultural fair at Dalston, a village near Carlisle. An old fellow with long grey sideburns, a sweeping grey moustache, a grey pullover and a flat grey cap leant on a table spread with ram’s horns. He was a crook- and stick-maker. Hazel and blackthorn were his favoured woods.

  ‘Do shepherds still use these to catch sheep?’ I asked him.

  He gave me a pitying look. ‘No, they chess ’em wi’ a quad bike,’ he said, as if every fool knew that. ‘Some of the old shepherds still use a crewook, though. You catch ’em wi’ a crewook, yoo’uv got to have a dog bring ’em to it. And he’s got to know exactly where to put that sheep. As it goes past ye, you’ve go like that.’

  He suddenly shot out his arm.

  ‘Cos when the sheep goes hurtling past ya with a dog after it, and the dog want to get it right till ya, and the sheep wants to get the hell out t’other way, yoo’uv got to be able to catch it with that hand and the force it’s going it swings in behind, and yer six foot’ll be short enough so that when it swings in behind, you grab the bloody wool on the sheep as well.’

  It sounded extremely complex and skilful. I asked whether mastery of the crook featured in sheepdog trials.

  ‘No, no, a lot of these fellows who do sheepdog trials only have three sheep,’ the old crook-maker told me. ‘I reckon in these world-class trials, that should be on the final day. The crewook. To see whether you can catch your sheep in an open field.’