The Southern Upland Way is an iconic route traversing the country from West to East. I made a last-minute decision to run it on a brief trip back to the UK as I only knew a very short section of the route itself, but it seemed to connect up a lot of places that I had previously worked in. We started in the early morning on a Saturday with a steep climb up steps from Portpatrick Harbour and I finished just before sunset on Monday evening winding my way around the clifftop paths into Cockburnspath. In between those two places there are some stunning kilometres to run (even more if you take a few wrong turnings like I did - both going round in circles in the middle of the night, and missing junctions where signposts had become overgrown/removed so making me backtrack to where I'd gone astray) on road, on trail, across open moors, through towns, through woodlands, through bogs, by lakes and reservoirs and along beautiful ridges. The route has a bit of everything and I loved (almost) every bit of it, though admittedly I did want to just lie down at the side of the trail and sleep by the last day!
Athletes
Route variation
Standard route
Multi-sport
No
Gender category
Female
Style
Supported
Start date
Finish date
Total time
2d
14h
20m
45s
Verification
Report