The big plan was to get dropped off at one end of the Pentlands whilst Kim took the microlight up for a test flight with its newly welded exhaust. The Pentlands are fine hills just outside Edinburgh surrounding the picturesque Glencorse Reservoir – however, from Soutra, we couldn’t see them at all as they were dressed in cloud.

Aborting the big idea we visited the open day at Soutra (Dun Law) windfarm and got to stand inside a wind turbine which was not too exciting since they consist of a ladder leading upward and a large control panel. I tried to climb the ladder but was told in no uncertain terms that it was too dangerous. There were tethered birds of prey (obviously they don’t want them sliced up by the blades) and the bizarre juxtaposition of a demonstration of joinery run by WoodSchool, who told us they were upping sticks and sadly moving out of the Borders, and a couple of clowns on stilts waving windmills.

Southward to Melrose for a cup of chocolate at Plaisir du Chocolat in Melrose – well we would if their chocolate machine hadn’t decided to breakdown on the morning of their opening – but we munched happily on Laphroaig chocolate before heading off to clamber over a padlocked gate to make our way over the Leaderfoot Viaduct. They were talking of doing bungy jumping from there (which would be a rather fast 2 second trip before bouncing over the Tweed anglers). From there we could see the roman fort and a splendid view of the Eildons which was an option to climb as it was cloud free – however I decided that it was time to mount Ruberslaw (1392ft) because it had a poem written about it, and it was slightly higher than the Eildons.

When Ruberslaw puts on his cap
and the Dunion on her hood
Then a’ the wives o’ Teviotdale
Ken there will be a flood.

It seems to be quite common to write poetry about hills, Samuel Taylor Coleridge has a set of Hill Walking Poems including the splendidly named ‘ Lines Composed While Climbing the Left Ascent of Brockley Coomb, Somersetshire May 1795′ – they don’t write them like that anymore.

Lines composed while climbing the left ascent of Brockley Coomb, May 1795

With many a pause and oft reverted eye
I climb the Coomb’s ascent: sweet songsters near
Warble in shade their wild-wood melody:
Far off the unvarying Cuckoo soothes my ear.
Up scour the startling stragglers of the flock
That on green plots o’er precipices browse:
From the deep fissures of the naked rock
The Yew-tree bursts! Beneath its dark green boughs
(’Mid which the May-thorn blends its blossoms white)
Where broad smooth stones jut out in mossy seats,
I rest:—and now have gained the topmost site.
Ah! what a luxury of landscape meets
My gaze! Proud towers, and Cots more dear to me,
Elm-shadowed Fields, and prospect-bounding Sea.
Deep sighs my lonely heart: I drop the tear:
Enchanting spot! O were my Sara here.

Sunday was as bad weatherwise so I sat checking through which munros I had conquered almost exactly twenty years ago to make up the list that I still had to do before my dotage, whilst munching my way through ‘Aunt Bessies Tidgy Toads’ and watching endless episodes of the excellent series ‘The Survivors’ as the wind howled outside. The Pentlands will wait for another clearer weekend and some rhyming couplets.

The Scottish Emigrant’s Farewell by Alexander Hume

Fareweel, fareweel, my native hame,
Thy lanely glens and heath-clad mountains!
Fareweel thy fields o’ storied fame,
Thy leafy shaws and sparkling fountains.
Nae mair I’ll climb the Pentlands steep,
Nor wander by the Esk’s clear river;
I seek a hame far o’er the deep-
My native land, fareweel for ever!

The Death of Klinghoffer is an opera by the minimalist composer John Adams about the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro. It is condemned as “beyond contempt” by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre – it is difficult to get better reviews than that.

The Edinburgh International Festival contained a gem of a show in a Scottish Opera production at the glass fronted Edinburgh Festival Theatre – I went to the premiere. On the day the Gaza strip is fully evacuated and shortly to be returned to Palestine this was a timely event and following 911 and 77 I was jolly glad that no-one took 238 as a significant figure.

The story is simple but cruel – Palestinean terrorists take over a cruise ship from Alexandria and kill a wheelchair bound Jewish passenger – life goes on, callously apart from one – the opera probes the individual sentiments and on repeat viewing mines the deeper feelings. This is music, history and performance in perfect harmony – if only that were possible more often.

With a minimalist set (no digitally reconstructed Titanic set here – we are looking at back projected water on a few portholes and wooden decking – minimalist but giving focus to the excellent performances – CGI would add little to a real human tragedy, and we know it is not going to end well with the title being a big clue.

The attractive lady a few seats away from me was plucked from her seat by a middle eastern, gun toting terrorist and kicked down the stairs into a door and onto the stage – asking her out for an interval drink looked highly unlikely now. This happened simultaneously throughout parts of the audience and on stage they started to sing – either the audience were particularly gifted singers or these people were plants. It also shows a confluence of dress between opera goers and cruise ship passengers.

The cast were uniformally excellent, the gal in the peacock feathers and tight green uniform and magnificent thighs was particularly excellent, the music was minimally excellent – although not to many peoples taste if they were spoon fed Mozart, accounting for the less cramped conditions one normally gets at an opera performance. Perhaps packed performances are due to the unemployed and equity members 50% discount on dress circle prices (there wasn’t a terrorist discount listed).

With a green bathrobe clad obese woman spreading chocolate over her face, terrorists running around the stage in a wheelchair pointing automatic weapons in our general direction, a dancing girl revealing title boards and a home video of the cast lunching – this was a truly Festival event. It just needs something banned to make it historically Festival.

With the major expense looking like the wheelchair for the title character it was, on reflection, incredible to see what Scottish Opera had achieved here.

In fact I enjoyed the opera so much that when I motored back to the Borders before my TT turned into a pumpkin, I watched the channel 4 production on dvd which I had recorded ages ago but never got around to watching – television removes the immediacy of theatre and staged opera (although toilet breaks are easier) – but it is still an excellent documentary approach with a less minimalist set (it is filmed on a ship and has more splashes when the wheelchair corpse is dumped unceremoniously overboard) the music and words are still powerful and show this artform to be a true 21st century medium. The actual death was far more graphic in the film version but the death may only have been visible to the unemployed and equity members in the dress circle centre. I understood more with the filmic version but that could have been repeated viewing syndrome – there is also the web of course Klinghoffer extending that media – just waiting for the video podcast onto a PSP at the next performance.

I haven’t enjoyed John Adams so much since I forced the family to watch ‘Nixon in China’ at Christmas.

Mini Moto – a miniature motorcycle – after refusing to let my son get a mini moto (after a continual torrent of requests and pleading) his friend Ben brought one up – so we muscled in and all had a go. They are classed as ‘toys’ so screaming along the Lempitlaw road uninsured and playing tag with farm vehicles only a couple of inches off the ground (whilst looking totally ridiculous) was fun for a few minutes but when we found out it couldn’t take off the interest waned.

Humbie Church is a delightful spot (near but not in Humbie and down a long twisty forest road) with a churchyard beside a lovely stream and set in woodland. Not often visited and a delicious treat.

Flew over the Whitadder Reservoir where I had sailed previously and around East Lothian – on landing we found out that the exhaust had a large hole in it and was being held together by the springs (designed to hold it together in case a hole appears – hey sometimes this redundancy and safety first really works – otherwise I might have been sailing again in the Whiteadder). With the Gifford Flower Festival in full bloom the Gobin Ha’ was full so we retired to an enjoyable meal at the Tweeddale Arms Hotel.

Triathalon – Kim and I were roped into being timekeepers for the Kelso Sprint Triathalon – beats actually competing in it. I had the timer and Kim wrote down the numbers and the time I would scream out as runners fell over the finish line – my new nickname is ‘Big Clock’ being the official timekeeper of the accredited triathalon.

Ancrum Graveyard – home of the grave of the brother of Beatrix Potter – well the real attraction is the place, the stone bridge, the delightful bell tower on the ruined church and some awesome gravestones.

Philip Law and its unnamed brother (Michael Law?) are the impressive standalone hills seen from Carter Bar. The attraction of the clamber up the steep slopes is the view – it is stunning – 360 degrees of open country with little in the way of evidence of development after prehistoric times. The sun shined, the wind blew – the hills were great fun – and to top it all there is a stone circle on the way back in a young forest.

And relax over a plate of spinach in Indian spices at Jedburgh and read about pharology – the art of bagging lighthouses (or unbagging in the case of the Inchkeith lighthouse keeper who spent his shifts naked).

Time to put on the sailor suit – makes a change from the birthday suit – the council have invested 200K in the Whiteadder reservoir sailing club and built a wooden swiss chalet style clubhouse (better than the old portacabin) with a small flotilla of dinghies (Laser Picos and Wayfarers). Excellent resource and with two instructors they run 2 day courses through the Royal Yacht Association syllabus for 25 quid a day including rescue and a cup of tea.

The day started with a rush for the extra large wet suits, which I lost, so ended up wearing a fetching red anorak and my swimming trunks – Jamie was thrilled to find out that I had been shivering my timbers around his drinking water – I certainly wouldn’t like to have Seamen in my mains tank.

It was more reservoiring than dinghing – I even managed to fall in the water before getting onto the dinghy, managed to fall off the dinghy and at one point whilst gybing managed to capsize it entirely – righting it by swinging from the dagger board only to capsize it again by climbing in the wrong side.

Unfortunately whilst we were all off capsizing, tacking, gybing and shouting ‘Starboard’ like demented pirates, someone had rifled through our clothes pinching wallets and the instructors cash box. One of the dinghiers was a policeman from Galashiels who lost his warrant card and had to explain this to his chief constable. Being poor I didn’t have anything to lose and my underwear was protecting my bag and packed lunch.

The second day was spent on the rules of the sea, mainly breaking them. The wind was waving around the bottom of Admiral Beaufort’s scale blowing around dead calm so our race looked like something from a slowed down movie – I was using my rudder to paddle at one point. I was in the doldrums and supplies were running low – Water, water everywhere; Nor any drop to drink – well apart from being on a large inland water reservoir – unfortunately TimTams were at an all time low so it was time to paddle to shore.

There were no albatrosses but there was a military helicopter that flew very low over the reservoir and the RAF Tornadoes were always on display over the Lammermuir hills.

With several hundred geocaches around our postcode we set off to nab a few more goodies – first a clamber up Peniel Heugh and to the Waterloo Monument. Fighting our way through clouds of flies (exercising our arms more than our legs at times) we reached the top to get rained on – great view from the top with a rainbow and diffused rainbow patterns over the Cheviots and hte forests around were originally set out in the pattern of the battalions at Waterloo (although reforesting has rather destroyed the original aim). Found the cache finally (the GPS was essential for this one) and headed down into one of the battalion forests to tramp to the Barons Folly on the next hill.

The Barons Folly was where a local Baron was supposed to have built his trysting house for his mistresses – now it is left to the pigeons to tryst judging by the amount of guano on the floor. We marched through nettles and in pouring rain to find that the dark (and probably dry) forest way was blocked by a barbed wire fence and ended up heading for the old roman road of Deer Street through the side of a wheat field – we were soaked to the skin.

Only remedy for a good soaking was a good Indian curry – so stopped off in Jedburgh at the ‘Sunrise’ restaurant where, after a long wait, my patience was rewarded with a superb spinach pancake to munch in the car and a delicious vindaloo at home. Food is cooked to order and an interesting menu (including Tandoori Duck) will guarantee a return visit.

The next day was still non-flyable so more geocaching in Peebles this time – to Neidpath castle and a lovely walk along the Tweed to the Neidpath Viaduct which took us over the river and into a very dark railway tunnel – using Stuarts mobile phone light we made our way gingerly along the pitch dark, gravelled floor decorated with empty beer cans. It took ages and in the middle where the tunnel bends around there is total darkness with either entrance invisible. It doesn’t help doing this just after seeing Creep (London Underground horror) and The Descent (caving horror). The exit is lovely albeit boggy and we made our way back to Peebles along the Tweed Walk.

We finished hte day with the standing stones at Lyne Station, a fish supper at Big Ebs in Peebles (superb) and a delicious icecream at Caldwells in Innerleithen (our second that day… Innerleithen is just full of people illegaly parked and eating icecream).

That is most of the Scottish Borders geocaches done now – although there are oodles in Northumberland and especially around the Cheviots.