Bob Hayward & Nick Baldock have now run 21 consecutive marathons out of the 34 it will take to get to John O’Groats from Land’s End and in doing so have covered over 450 miles. This is all in aid of Podge the 13 year old boy who was so badly burnt in an attack last May.

It is easy to think that Scotland starts at Edinburgh, but to do so is to miss out on one of the most beautiful regions of the UK – The Borders.

Imagine waking up early to the sound of water caressing its way gently over rocks, a light breeze playing amongst densely populated trees, to the rich sweat fragrance of pine damp from the early dewy mist and the early morning call of two journey runners “Oh dearie dearie me it’s morning again – what shall we do today? I know lets go for a run!” (or words to that effect).

It seems to take longer each morning to get ready, more blister plasters to carefully place on tender toes and feet, more strapping for sore muscles and joints, more vitamins, lotions, creams and embrocations – and that’s just for Ian the driver.

Once on the road they are struck by the thick mist almost a heavy cloud asleep on the moss floor using the pine forests above as a quilt – this makes things quite humid, so breathing is a little harder and sweating is a lot easier. The trees occasionally allow them a peak at a stream close by, the water is either translucent brown from the bracken at its side or crystal clear revealing a peaty bottom and Nick said it would be rude to look at its bottom so they can’t say which!

Occasionally the forest peals itself back like a banana skin to allow the inner beauty of the borders to be seen. Beautiful rolling hills and mounds so close you can almost touch them, so steep even the sheep and goats have problems balancing on their sloops. While the pine trees appear to have been planted and harvested as crops many hills are dotted with craggy trees twisted by harsh tormenting winters and starved of nutrients by the solid rock that holds their roots in a vice.

As they run through the undulating roads that thankfully weave a reasonably flat path through the landscape they relish the sparseness of the landscape and of the traffic. The most common vehicle appears to be the logging trucks piled high with pine logs destined for paper mills to create our daily papers, MFI to create flat packed wonders or even artists to create ornaments to decorate our homes. What ever their journeys end the volume of trucks is greater than the Tesco, Sainsburys & Asda lorries that dogged their steps out of the South West so many weeks back.

Having climbed a seriously long hill out of Hawick they were enjoying the benefit of the down hill sloop, like pushing the clutch peddle in and letting a car coast, when they saw three cyclists in the distance coming their way. They joked about meeting up with Rob, Caroline and Malc from yesterday, wouldn’t that be funny! – Yep you guess it, the three were the one and the same, well not one–three – but you know what they mean. The banter was good and lifted our spirits particularly as they had the up hill slog and we the flatter path, we left them singing – “you take the high road & we’ll take the low road ...”

Selkirk was on them before they knew it and their residence that night was a camp site with real showers and a laundry – relief in so many ways. Also thanks to Alister for the great massage and his lovely wife for the great tea and biscuits.