Leaving the purpose built cycle path alongside the A696, this section cuts across open farmland and is a very pleasurable track towards East Woodburn.

It's open and barren here and ideal territory for a bit of cattle stealing. It's easy to forget the history in this area between the 13th and 17th centuries when clans and families of the Scots and English would raid for sheep and cattle. It became a way of life and was passed on from generation to generation without any moral guilt as to the act of stealing.

It probably started as Scots against English but soon spread to feuding families, an incident having sparked off an argument, a grudge held for generations, and even many a noblemen would turn a blind eye or become involved, so inveterate a way of life had it all become over the several hundred year period.

So if you belong to one of these families then you may have links with the Border Reivers. Your past murkier than you know ...

Anderson, Armstrong, Beattie, Bell, Bromfield, Burn, Burnip, Carlisle, Carnaby, Carruthers, Charlston, Collingwood, Cranston, Craw, Croser, Curwen, Dacre, Davison, Dixon, Dodd, Douglas, Dunne, Elliot, Fenwick, Forstar, Gilchrist, Glendenning, Graham, Gray, Hall, Harden, Hedley, Henderson, Heron, Hetherinton, Hodgson, Hume, Hunter, Irvine, Jamieson, Johnstone, Kerr, Laidlaw, Little, Lowther, Maxwell, Medford, Milburn, Moffat, Musgrave, Nixon, Noble, Ogle, Oliver, Potts, Pringle, Read, Ridley, Robinson, Routledge, Rutherford, Salkeld, Scott, Selby, Shaftoe, Stamper, Stapleton, Stokoe, Storey, Tailor, Tait, Thomson, Trotter, Turnbull, Turner, Wilkinson, Witherington, Yarrow, Young.

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