WINDY GYLE 10 MILER FROM TROW (The Edge of the Roman Empire)

Leaving North Shields at 6am we drove 6 miles east of Alwinton to a hardstanding where we parked up. The name of the place was Trow. The area is of outstanding panorama and of course the memories came flooding back as we passed a tiny farm by the name of Carshope i kept on reminding the lads of the time when i was a Soldier and we bombed our magazines up in a barn and his wife came out with the cuppas then in a hail of machine gun bullets we came under attack from the otterburnia freedom fighters. I still say the farmer tipped them off. But thats not important what is important is i dont have to run up hills these days i walk. The walk was up hill for the first 2 miles the steepness varies but the wind was blowing in our favour and Gary Smith had the sweets. Heading towards the North Pennine way The Cheviot was in full view( happy days) As our ascent levelled out we came to the Scottish border. "Yes" i did want to do the cheesy tourist thing and put one foot in scotland and leave the other in England but remember a couple of moments ago i mentioned Cheviot and happy days. Well...the cheviot had dissapeared and the sky had became black at this point, the wind had became gail force and i knew that this wasn't the time for photos it was a time to Get higher. Instead of the rain coming to us we went to the rain. That's right folks, we ascended Windy Gyle it was like something from 500 Spartons as we fought our way to the summit and took refuge in Russells Cairn just by the trig point(it was epic). We took some water and Gary took a stone . The rain had stopped and yet again it was "happy days" We headed off from the cairn into the college valley the ground was similar to that of the Allendale challenges peat bogs and bastard grass. Using the OS map we adjusted the route slightly as we had made good time and 13 mile is better than 10mile especially when its sunny. I had covered mee heed after getting it burnt a couple of weeks earlier. We headed into Clennell Street forest and followed the water course of uswaypath burn and took in some impressive waterfalls finaly we returned to Trow. The walk took 5hours 30 and in stages is physically demanding would be a nice little warm up for the Allendale 2010 if you hit on with a mid winter wet week. Next Saturday its back in to the lakes (wainrights yippeeee..) I'm wearing mee brown trousers and taking lots of loo roll incase we do some more of them ridge walks. Going to have to start a trail 100 count as a record of what i've summited