Cardrona - Craigie Side - Grieson Hill - Cardrona

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The walk starts by the bus stop at the entrance to Cardrona Village and then goes along part of the trackbed of the old railway which ran between Galashiels and Peebles, but is now an elevated footpath running through Cardrona Golf Course behind the Cardrona Hotel. The route then goes over a footbridge above the River Tweed and across the golf course, at first following a red, gravel footpath and later going along the rough to the side of the fairway. After a very short stretch along a minor road, the route enters Cardrona Forest Park and crosses a footbridge over the Kirk Burn. It then follows several stretches which have been variously waymarked by the Forestry Commission. Much of the revised version of the walk follows Wallace's Walk, waymarked by posts bearing red rings, starting along a footpath which climbs obliquely but steadily up the hillside through the forest on the right bank of the burn.

The revised route continues along the waymarked red route through the forest, eventually zigzagging downhill to cross a forest road and climb relatively steeply up to the Iron Age fort on Pykes Knowe. From there, the route continues along a path through the forest before following a forest road round the contour for a short way and then turning down a path off the route waymarked by the Forestry Commission and past the ruins of Cardrona Tower, to leave the forest near Cardrona House. The walk continues down very minor roads, at first unmetalled, to reach the B road along the south side of the Tweed. A short distance along this road the route runs through part of a new housing estate in Cardrona, but then uses a footpath along an old railway track and the edge of another part of Cardrona Golf Course to return to the starting point.

Scotland - South Scotland - Scottish Borders - Tweed Valley

9/2/2022 - Ryder Cowan

Using the walk details as an initial guide, we had an enjoyable forest walk yesterday. However, the walk details appear to be in need of another extensive update. There were too many changes needed to record all here but some examples follow. Parking at the start of the walk is now restricted to 2 hours; we found an alternative close by in a car park for anglers. The village store has closed down, and possibly because of changes to road layout the direction to follow at the walk start is now not immediately obvious. There is no longer any 'red gravel'. There was no sign of some of the referenced waymarking posts. It appears that some of the forest tracks no longer follow the lines they did when the route was last mapped, probably because of forestry operations, meaning that in at least one place an instruction to turn right on an intersecting path should say turn left. Some forest tracks shown on the OS map no longer exist, and some signposted tracks are not shown on the OS map. We ended up devising our own route based on the forest tracks we found and GPS.

5/21/2012 - Walkingworld Admin

Our thanks to Morley Sewell for his extensive updates for this walk. May 2012. Adrian (Admin)