Two Breweries Recce

Last Saturday a few keen Moorfooters took on a recce of the Two Breweries hill race route. Alex, Dorien and Mike who have signed up for the race in September were keen to familiarise themselves with the 18 mile route, while Ewan and myself (Gillian) went along for a fun day out and remind ourselves why we didn’t enter the race ;-)

This year sees the 40th anniversary of the iconic race which starts at the Traquair Brewery (Traquair House ) and finishes at Broughton Brewery. Covering 18 miles (30km) over the hills with 4900ft (1500m) ascent it’s not for the faint hearted! Add to that the pressure of a self navigated course with 8 time controlled checkpoints on the hill tops!

A recce is a must for this race with landscapes changing throughout the year with forests being felled, deer fences erected, roads built, and ferns, heather & bogs all adding their own challenges!

Alex had suggested a recce at a nice social pace, so 5 of us gathered at the Bear Gates at 9am smiling and full of enthusiasm as the weather looked good for the first part of the day at least! 

   

Checking the OS map and strava route from a previous recce we headed off the road from Traquair into the hills. A nice steep farm track to warm the calves up, we tackled tricky farm gates, squelchy cow fields & waist high ferns before our first main hilltop of Birkscairn hill. Sometimes the downhill is worse than going up and with the view of the valley of Glensax and Hundleshope Heights on the other side, we had to gingerly make our way down through the heather past the grouse buts to the river, then slog all the way back up to Hundleshope!

   

Carrying on to Stob Law, the view from here was fantastic, seeing the entire length of the Pentlands, Arthur’s Seat and even Fife!

After the descent to Glenrath Farm, and the Manor Valley Road we were then into an area of tree felling on a massive scale! The route up through the trees to the checkpoint on Whitelaw hill seemed totally inaccessible, so we followed the drovers road and a new forest road up to the gate at Dead Wife’s grave. We weren’t too sure where the race route would go, so maybe another wee recce of this bit will be needed!?

I normally look forward to a downhill, but the descent down towards Stobo was another tough one and by this time I think we were all beginning to flag.

We were well past the halfway point by now though and with time pressing on, we were encouraged that we just had one more big hill to come, albeit Trahenna - the biggest of them all! The other thing pushing us on was the thought that the cafe in Broughton shut at 5:00 giving us just 2 hours! (Thankfully I’d taken the car to Broughton the night before so didn’t have the added pressure of having to make the 5:00 bus! )

A steady slog up past Stobo castle and Loch you are then faced with the sight of Trahenna and the choice of routes up to the top. Perhaps we took the wrong choice, but bogs, ferns & deer fences made our ascent more difficult than it should have been. Another bit to revisit another day to perfect the right route :-)

But we made it to the top nonetheless and were rewarded with the welcome sight of Broughton village down below.
The chance of making the cafe now was getting slim as we hit 4:30pm, but with 4G signal at the top of the hill we made the emergency call to the cafe getting in our orders for drinks & scones!

Spurred on by this thought it was then just a case of tip-toing down the sheer face of Trahenna and sprinting along the long straight tarmac road to the Laurelbank cafe! As luck would have it, the cafe was catering for a function that night and let us sit in for our very well earned cuppas & scone & jam!

It  had been a long hard day, but a good one! The rain stayed away, we had no accidents (other than a cut finger on a gate and a bit of cramp), we never got lost, never gave up, and didn’t fall out with each other  All in all a great challenging day out in the local hills, and good chance to test out our stamina, willpower and navigational skills!

Good luck and greatest respect to Alex, Dorien, and Mike, and anyone else doing the race on 28 September, it’s one I’ll be happy to support from the sidelines ;-) 

Entries are still open on Entry Central if you fancy it?! More details on https://twobreweries.org.uk/

Thank you Alex for organising, and all for a lovely day :-)