Innerleithen, Minch Moor, Three Brethern and Yair Forest loop.

There were 8 of us who set of from the car park at Innerleithen at 9am , the usual 4 of us plus another 4 who got wind of our cross country mid winter foray into the hills and came along as well. We never actually made it up to Minch Moor as the route is closed for tree felling just now, so in the interests of speed and time we missed out the diversion to it. There's some steep climbs included in the route we did take and it was interesting to see that the Pentlands cycling we do comes to the fore in the climbs.(In my case, not in the descending though!)

A rather blurry photo taken with the self timer at the Three Brethern, by the looks of it 2 of the gang are somewhere else!

After about 20 miles there were only the 4 usual suspects left to face the killer 2 mile climb back up through Yair Forest and Mark declared himself an inch from death when he reached the top, he did however manage it, though how he did it with a jacket and about 3 base layers without melting away was a mystery to the rest of us!

The end of the trip with over 26 miles in greasy muck a lot of the way, over 4000 feet of climbing, in my case burning over 1900 calories and a total of nearly 5.5 hours, its hard to say if we look pleased or relieved.