Ribbon of Wilderness by Peter Wright sampler

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introduction
The significant length of the Watershed and the variety of
terrain it passes through are just two of the factors that give this
geographic feature such appeal. But they also present a challenge –
how best to break it down into more manageable stretches? I have
identified it in five sections which, though very different in length,
have each got their particular character. They are in part determined
by the geological structure of Scotland, and use some geological
features as their parameters.
I have chosen to approach this description of the Watershed of
Scotland from south to north, in part because that is the direction
in which I walked and explored it, but also because its northern
terminus at Duncansby Head points tantalisingly towards South
Ronaldsay in the Orkney Islands, via the Pentland Skerries – now
described and illustrated in detail in Nature’s Peace – a Celebration
of Scotland’s Watershed, published in 2013 by Luath Press. I have
described in some detail the ways and extent to which the
Watershed is a boundary, and therefore adopt the most fitting
word for a boundary in Scottish lore and language – a March. Each
of the five Marches of the Watershed has its own distinctive terrain
and place in the geography of Scotland.
The Reiver March
The Border Reivers were primarily of the great landholding families
that occupied that area, and much of their lawless reiving or cattle
rustling epitomised the times that they lived in. The Armstrongs
and Scotts, Livingstones and Elliots, and many others, whose deeds
of theft, pillage, murder and retribution have been handed down to
us in publications like Wilson’s Tales of the Borders, in the writings
of Sir Walter Scott and, most beautifully, in the Border Ballads.
Starting at Peel Fell on the border with England, this first 133km
of the Watershed runs at an average elevation of some 550m above
sea level. It sweeps through the higher ground in both Wauchope
and Craik forests, on what are aptly described as ‘the rolling border
hills’. It then follows in a great S-shaped gesture round the head -
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