Off on another adventure

I'm off again today, but where am I going? Watch this space for updates.

Right, first leg of the journey out of the way:



I'm in a cafe in Durham enjoying an Americano with extra espresso shot and a piece of chocolate cake. I can't show you a picture because I've already eaten it. Never mind, here's a picture of Durham in the early morning gloom.



Not a bad run. Land Rover behaved itself. In fact I found myself saying 'Good Land Rover' as I pulled into the car park. Some of the overhead signs on the M1 said it was closed between junctions 24 and 25 but fortunately the workmen were just taking the cones away as I approached, so I was able to speed along without diversion. On my own today so, signal permitting I'll be updating as I go along. I'm off into the Borders area in a minute so mobile signal might well be pretty poor as it often is in rural areas. But I'll see what i can do. More soon.

Bonnie Scotland:


Rather grey and drizzly, but the genuine article. Real Scotland.

I'v been to see a place called Riccarton Junction. It's near Hawick and used to be a village, or even a small town, around the railway station. When the railway closed, so did the town and there's not much left now. Here's my itinerary:


Here's what it used to look like:

All those houses have gone. The house in the trees in the middle of the picture is still there but is derelict:

It was the station master's house, and given the importance of the station, it was built quite handsomely on a rather grand scale.


Lovely stone fireplaces and battens and laths on the walls rather than just plaster straight on the masonry. Made it a bit warmer and dryer for the most important man in the village no doubt.
Nature has taken over again from the efforts made a few years ago by a railway preservation society:

.
A few other buildings are left. The school and the schoolteacher's house.



And that's about it. Not much left of the thriving community. I'm interested in abandoned villages, but most of the ones I look at are medieval. This s a bit more recent. At Whitrope there are some efforts to collect railway paraphernalia


It looks a bit like everyone has given up though. Things are rusty and everything appeared to be shut. I hope they can get it together and make it work again.

I'm in Hawick having coffee and cake for the second time today.

I'm in Berwick on Tweed now. Just had a wander around among the pound shop style bargain emporia and the 19th Century stone buildings alluding to better days.

Pictures all coming out dark because it is a dull day - sorry!

Nice bridges:
That's the railway bridge over the Tweed
Here's the old road bridge:

Somewhere in the background there is my Land Rover - jut to show i really do make these trips in a Defender and I'm not just whizzing about in a Mondeo and pretending.

This was the entrance to the car park:

Rather a mossy boat in filthy water:


Not so much messing about in boats as boating about in mess I think.

Bit further south now. I've had a look at Bamburgh Castle. I was a bit late to be worth paying to go in, because they were nearly closing, but this is what it looks like:




I've stopped in Seahouses a little further south for chips. There are loads of chip shops in Seahouses, as you might expect with a name like that.
Driving around in a Land Rover all day makes you fancy chips, I've found.

Right, I'd better head for home now

Riccarton Junction is an interesting place, driven through it many times. The branch line from there ran to Kielder and the schoolhouse is still occupied as you will have seen. The village was entirely for the railway, and indeed there was no road access at all until the Forestry Commission built the one that comes in from the Whitrope side.

The Waverley Heritage guys at Whitrope are still active, if I recall correctly they were laying some more track this summer. They had aspirations to extend their section of line across the public road and to a Riccarton Junction however it's not happened. They also wanted to go north through the tunnel, which you used to be able to drive through however it suffered a roof collapse in 2002 and was gated off shortly after.

Yes, there was a flurry of activity about ten or more years ago. There's an interpretation board that was put up in the mid 2000s now going green:

Look at all the zig zag marks where snails have eaten the moss off it. They've got some stuff at the Whitrope site but it doesn't look like anything's happening. I hope they manage to sort something out because I like preserved railways. Sometimes on derelict sites the plants last longer than the buildings. Little strawberry plants were busy reproducing:

The place is a lot more overgrown now than in a lot of the pictures from the mid 2000s which you find all over the internet:

There's alder, birch, ash, Douglas fir, sycamore and a few other things all making themselves at home in the spent ballast.

Anyway, I'm home now:
First leg:

And the last bit:

Tremendous, you've been up North of the Wall where I live. It's not always that dull I think the sun has been out 3 or 4 times this year. Missed it as I was on holiday at the time. However, there has been a lot of talk about it in the village so it's probably true,.

Al2O3 said:

Tremendous, you've been up North of the Wall where I live. It's not always that dull I think the sun has been out 3 or 4 times this year. Missed it as I was on holiday at the time. However, there has been a lot of talk about it in the village so it's probably true,.

Click to expand...

Yes I got the impression you were somewhere between Newcastle and Edinburgh. I was seeing roadsigns to Edinburgh and was only about 50 miles from it at some points. I was wondering whether to go up there, just to say I'd been to Edinburgh and back in a day, but I wanted to get out and walk about in various places so didn't quite get that far.

Nice day out. How many miles did you cover.

Col

There's something special about the border counties. The skies seem very big, even when the cloud is low, and you get huge spacious vistas of countryside, with rolling hills, fields, moorland and forestry plantations. It looks like this on the west side, in Ayrshire and Dumfries and Galloway too. The distances are vast as well. In the midlands 50 miles will get you between most of the major cities, but up there 50 miles is barely a couple of villages, and probably won't get you to the range of hills you can see in the distance.

Colthebrummie said:

Nice day out. How many miles did you cover.

Col

Click to expand...

Forgot to look at the odometer so I can't tell you exactly. Berwick is about 250 miles from where I live and I did quite a bit of scooting about while I was up there, looking for abandoned railway stations and suchlike, so it must have been getting on for 600 altogether. Who says the Defender isn't the ideal car for long journeys?

What app do you use to plot your route like that? Like to use that for when driving my lorry about.

Also what age is your Fender? Impressive mileage in one of those

Co-Pang-Yang said:

What app do you use to plot your route like that? Like to use that for when driving my lorry about.

Also what age is your Fender? Impressive mileage in one of those

Click to expand...

The maps are drawn from my tracker. There's some discussion about the company and its wares here: https://www.landyzone.co.uk/land-rover/back2you-tracker-and-app.306493/.

The Defender is a 2006 model TD5. It's up to around 100,000 miles now. Comfort wise, there are some Exmoor Trim front seats, and it came with a set of shaped insulation mats for the seatbox, transmission tunnel and footwells (rather knackered, but I left them in), so it's perhaps a little more civilised than some others. With the overdrive fitted I can do battle with the white van men in the outside lane at barely 2,500 rpm, so the long stretches of motorway driving aren't too bad at all.

Brown said:

The maps are drawn from my tracker. There's some discussion about the company and its wares here: https://www.landyzone.co.uk/land-rover/back2you-tracker-and-app.306493/.

The Defender is a 2006 model TD5. It's up to around 100,000 miles now. Comfort wise, there are some Exmoor Trim front seats, and it came with a set of shaped insulation mats for the seatbox, transmission tunnel and footwells (rather knackered, but I left them in), so it's perhaps a little more civilised than some others. With the overdrive fitted I can do battle with the white van men in the outside lane at barely 2,500 rpm, so the long stretches of motorway driving aren't too bad at all.

Click to expand...

One of the most desirable models then.

I have driven 2.2 late Defender then straight away my Discovery 2

The old stations are fascinating, any more pictures?

MJI said:

The old stations are fascinating, any more pictures?

Click to expand...

There are loads of pictures online if you google Riccarton Junction. I see the railway was in use until as recently as 1969. There was a flurry of activity in the mid 2000s and the Friends of Riccartion Junction seemed to get some money to hire an excavator and crane to do some remedial work and lay a short section of track
http://www.riccartonjunction.org/index.html
Though there seem to have been some serious disagreements in that august body, judging by the comments here:
http://www.riccartonjunction.org/history.html

A few more of my pictures include:

A station building which was restored as part of the activity in 2004, but seems to be falling to bits again now.

More details of the station master's house. Look at the quality of the stone dressing on the door jamb to the right. Also, you can see where the flues go in the wall at the back by the brickwork set into the stone.

More architectural details. Even the stone on the inner faces of the walls, which was intended to be hidden behind the plaster has been dressed.

The plants are sometimes the only clue that there's been a house on the site:

Outbuildings at the back of the house:

Signals awaiting restoration at Whitrope:

More stuff awaiting restoration at Whitrope:

I was hoping to see that restoration had advanced a little over the few years since 2004, but it looks like things are going backwards.

Brown said:

There are loads of pictures online if you google Riccarton Junction. I see the railway was in use until as recently as 1969. There was a flurry of activity in the mid 2000s and the Friends of Riccartion Junction seemed to get some money to hire an excavator and crane to do some remedial work and lay a short section of track
http://www.riccartonjunction.org/index.html
Though there seem to have been some serious disagreements in that august body, judging by the comments here:
http://www.riccartonjunction.org/history.html

The plants are sometimes the only clue that there's been a house on the site:

I was hoping to see that restoration had advanced a little over the few years since 2004, but it looks like things are going backwards.

Click to expand...

Nature is taking the upper hand I see.

Speckydude said:

Nature is taking the upper hand I see.

Click to expand...

Yes, nature on the track and nature red in tooth and claw in the preservation society too.