Kircudbright - blackford (near Carlisle)

We awoke in Chatton house B and B in Kircudbright to a perma-drizzle outside. We enjoyed our continental style breakfast (with a fantastic fruit salad) in the company of another young couple also staying in the B & B whilst pouring over our maps for the day and peering out of the window into the reasonably wet and grey morning, wondering how long our waterproof gloves would hold out today.

Delya gave us some very good advice about which road to take out of Kircudbright to avoid tedious hilly stuff and although the road suggested was closed for repair we took it anyway. This made it nice and quiet. 2 miles down the road we found some loose cows who decided we were trying to heard them whilst their friends in the field started to moo threateningly at us. Rob cycled on through whilst I cowered behind a road works sign at the road side. After some expert herding from Rob, he left his bike down the road and returned to escort me through the bovine blockade.

The last of many Scottish rainbows we saw.

After a recovery bacon butty (should have been beef really!) in Castle Douglas we continued on our way. The weather was still damp but with sunny spells and we saw a lot of rainbows this day. Cycling on towards Annan we began to feel a real excited energy at the prospect of crossing over into England. We stopped briefly in Annan to pick up dinner and hammered on towards Gretna and the English border and county of Cumbria.

Cycling out of Gretna took us on an amusing and slightly alarming road literally alongside the M6 (there just seems to be a fence in between!) but it wasn't look before we found our campsite for the night, "Dandie dinmont".

Having pitched the tent in the rather soggy camping area we discovered that the gas cannister (a non self sealing one) had leaked itself dry in my pannier leaving us with no ability to cook dinner. We sheepishly knocked on the reception door at the campsite to ask if they sol gas canisters or if they could help us out with a kettle full of water so we could cook our emergency couscous and were invited in with our stir dry ingredients to use their kitchen and even eat our dinner at their table. We felt very lucky to be met with such kindness from strangers once again as we ate a good meal and went to bed well fed and warm and back in England.