A dull sunless day with strong westerly wind : quite dry. The roads are absolutely dried like March + I saw a car going up to Smedheugh1 raising a cloud of dust. I cycled to Pinegrove + Curror Street, Forest Road + went up by the Loan to Whitmuir.2 From there I went by the drove road to Greenhill height3 to look out for the hounds which met at Riddell4 but saw no sign. Came down to Hartwoodburn + home by Mill Street.5 Was not out after returning at 1.40. Lot of people in at night.6
1 Smedheugh, Selkirk, opposite Gala Rid, grid reference NGR NT490,279.
2 Dr Muir appears to have run along Ettrick Terrace to Pinegrove, descended Curror Street and returned via Forest Road from where he would have crossed Market Place to run up Kirk Wynd, South Port and the Loan, emerging opposite Ladylands.
3 The Drove Road ran south out of Whitmuir (emerging from the end of the road at NT492,266) and then south east between Ladywood Edge and Greenhill Heights (area north of Greenhill, now Dryden Greenhill, NT482,248) before turning more or less due west at which point it apparently becomes lost in the area of Greendemains (Greendemmings on the six inch Ordnance Survey) and Haremoss, not far from the old Selkirk / Ashkirk toll bar, approximately NT467,248. The route may be nicely plotted on Ordnance Survey six inch Roxburghshire Sheet XIII (with parts of Selkirkshire XI), published 1863.
4 The Riddell estate is due east of where Dr Muir had stopped.
5 Dr Muir has cut south of Selkirk on his return, through Hartwoodburn, NT470,267, and up Mill Street to the Green into Market Place (probably the easiest gradient back into the town centre for elderly cyclists as the Editor knows from experience).
6 Dr Muir has had a lot of people in for the medical practice’s consultation hour in the evening. In his 30 October 1922 diary Dr Muir noted “People in at night from 6 till 7.30.”
[Source: Scottish Borders Archives & Local History Service SBA/657/26, Dr J S Muir of Selkirk, medical practitioner, journal for 1923]
Rumbling Clint's Scottish Notes 