The Southern Upland Way – Planning and Getting to the Start

A bit of Background

The Southern Upland Way is one of the “Big 4” of Scotland’s Great Trails, being one of the 4 dating back from the days of Long Distance Routes, and predating the re-badging of the English and Welsh ones as National Trails, and the Scottish ones as Great Trails. The Long Distance Walkers Association (LDWA) still recognise the Scottish Big 4 (West Highland Way, Great Glen Way and Speyside Way being the other 3) as if they are still National Trails for the purpose of their Long Distance Paths register of completers.

The trail is officially 344km (or 214 miles) long with some 7,775m of ascent, and typically takes 12-16 days to complete.

Planning It

The plan to do the trail, at least at this point in time as I intended to do it someday, came about out of a conversation one evening with my friend and sometime walking partner, Paul…

Paul: I take it the Southern Upland Way is on your list?

Me: It sure is…. Fancy it ?

Paul: I certainly do…….

…and just like that I had a new trail walk to plan. We settled on late April, and decided to break it into two parts – to help Paul with scheduling the holiday. We settled on Sanquhar as being the obvious break point. We’d do the first part in April, then return the following April to do the rest.

The sections broke down roughly as:

• Part 1 – Portpatrick to Sanquahar: approx. 148km and 2,600m ascent
• Part 2 – Sanquhar to Cockburnspath: approx. 196km and 5,000m ascent

We could have split the path at Moffat – a further 46km and 1,400m of ascent on from Sanquahar, making for a much more even split of the route, but opted for Sanquhar as it’s on a rail line, whereas Moffat meant a bus.

The official website for the trail breaks the walk into 12 sections, and immediately acknowledges that some of these sections are a bit much. Their itinerary has 40km + days for 3 of the first 4 days, and a whopping 1,200m of ascent on the fourth day – the biggest day of the whole trail. Generally their itinerary has the long days also with huge amounts of ascent – it’s based entirely on convenient places to start and end the sections (ie for accommodation).

We were going to wild camp, or at least go prepared to wild camp, and take advantage of more formal accommodation along the way if and when it presented itself. This also meant that we could be flexible with our daily distances.

We did need to time box the whole trip though – Paul had limited annual leave to spare for the trip. We settled on starting on a Sunday (allowing Paul to travel up on the Saturday) and travelling home again early the following Sunday. This would allow us to finish as late as the Saturday afternoon, which on paper was enough time.

I then made one further tweak to my travel plans – travelling up overnight on the Thursday to Glasgow, and then taking the train to Stranraer on Friday. This allowed me to be in position for Stranraer parkrun first thing Saturday. If we finished early enough (unlikely) then I could potentially also fit in a parkrun somewhere on the second Saturday. I really hate missing them.

I booked accommodation in Stranraer for the Friday and Saturday nights, and something in Glasgow for the second Saturday night. Anything else we’d book as we went.

Getting to the Start

I really don’t enjoy the overnight coach ride to Glasgow, which I’ve done several times now, but you really can’t argue with a price of around £11 from London. It’s certainly the cheapest way to get to Scotland, but at the cost of sleep. Mind you I wouldn’t get much sleep on the sleeper train either, and would be paying something like £70 for a seat on that.

So the Thursday saw me heading into London in the evening, very much against the flow of people.

The coach itself was pretty packed and even staggering around Knutsford Services bleary-eyed at 3am on a rest stop was welcome relief. I dozed fitfully for a bit, but was very much relying on the restorative effects of a night’s B&B to restore me to working order.

I emerged in Glasgow, grabbed my bag and made a beeline for Wetherspoons for breakfast. I’m not a huge fan of the place, but am prepared to compromise my principles when desperate for a fry-up and as much free refill coffee as I can drink.

My train to Ayr was at 10:30 so I had a bit of time to kill. The train itself was pretty busy and full of people heading to the races for the Scottish Grand National meet. Things quietened down on the next leg to Stranraer, where the stunning scenery I’d be walking over in the coming days flashed past the window. So much gorse, and surprisingly hilly and empty terrain. I thought “I’m going to like this”.

I alighted from the train at Stranraer harbour and as I was doing the long walk towards town, noticed something not right with my rucksack hipbelt. A strap was gone, somehow. I legged it back to the station to see if I could find it – I must have dropped it as I got off the train. Absolutely no sign of it. Not a good start.

I had more time to kill in Stranraer as I couldn’t check-in to my accommodation until 3pm, so explored the streets of Stranraer to work out what the shops and places to eat situation was. Then ended up sitting in Agnew Park, a bit of a recce for the next day’s parkrun. And while sat on the bench I decided to see if I could jury rig my hipbelt in some way. On closer inspection, it transpired that I hadn’t actually lost a strap – it had just come undone, and because of the odd way it winds through two sets of buckles, I’d thought it had gone. It was all there, and just needed to be rethreaded. Phew.

Saturday came and with parkrun just across the road, it was an easy start. The Run Director’s briefing was in the form of a Robert Burns style poem. I managed an ok time – unsurprisingly as the course was all tarmac and flat, but slowed by taking photos as I went – then headed to get a coffee.

I spent the rest of the day mooching about town and watching the snooker, before walking to the station to meet Paul.

The next day, Sunday, we’d get the bus from Stranraer to Portpatrick to start the trail…