Hag Law

This forms part of the Cross Borders Drove Road, a long distance walking route from Harperrig, south-west of Edinburgh, to Hawick.

This track forms part of the Cross Borders Drove Road, a long-distance walking route between Harperrig, south-west of Edinburgh, and Hawick.

This track forms part of the Cross Borders Drove Road, a long-distance walking route between Harperrig, south-west of Edinburgh, and Hawick.

A view down the valley of the Flemington Burn, with the low winter sun highlighting old sheepfolds on the hillsides.

It was a day of stark contrasts between bright winter sunshine and banks of mist.

A mixture of low winter sunlight and banks of mist made for some atmospheric conditions.

Quite a contrast with the bright winter sunshine down in the valley.

A hill farm seen from the Cross Borders Drove Road.

Looking from the Cross Borders Drove Road towards Mendick Hill (451m).

The Cross Borders Drove Road follows this path to cross the col between Drum Maw and Hag Law.

Pasture on the lower slopes of Drum Maw with Black Mount (516m) on the skyline.

A good path on grass leads down to the Fingland Burn. Compare with NT1847 : Descent to Romanno Hope taken in December 2018.

Before too long it looks as though a footbridge will be built here in Romanno Hope.

The burn rises on the western slopes of Wether Law in the Cloich Hills and joins the Flemington Burn a few hundred metres downstream.

The Flemington Burn rises on the east side of Wether Law in the Cloich Hills, here meets the Fingland Burn and flows southwest to the Lyne Water.

On the path from Romannobridge, also on the Cross Borders Drove Road.

The path from the Flemington Burn to the forest road near Courhope, also part of the Cross Borders Drove Road.

In ten years time most of the large field this hill is in will be a plantation - small saplings, now around a foot high, have been planted in rows in most of it, and a deer fence is in place to stop any potential nibbling. The young trees have been planted pretty much exactly two metres apart - meaning that a sapling, if not at the edge, has a two metre gap to a tree to the left and right, and to a tree in front and behind. This is surely startlingly unscientific and a cause for concern, considering the research that must be put into these things. Commercial forests are designed to maximise timber output in an area. Obviously the more trees you have per area the greater the yield. However, there is a trade-off. The closer the trees get (only applicable when really close, as is the case with commercial forestry) the less sunlight their lower branches receive. And therefore there are less leaves on the branches, meaning less energy can be made within them to be passed on to the trunk to make it grow taller. A couple of sources online mention this 2mx2m grid layout being the standard in UK forestry. Even in the highly unlikely event of the above trade-off calculation leading to a distancing of such a conveniently round number, this should surely be adjusted almost all of the time to take account of climate, soil type, hours of sunlight and the aspect of each plantation, and sometimes to small sections of trees within the same plantation. To apply the two metre rule across the board in all circumstances seems pretty lazy, not very business-like, and perhaps even stupid.