Janet Christie's Mum's the Word - from sandwiches to sheep to sex, we’re always talking when we're walking

If my friends and I could stroll in silence we might see more wildlife

Mum's the Word: A shrew, the smallest mammal in the UK. Pic. Adobe

We’re in the Scottish Borders, walking from Longformacus to Lauder, Country Girl and Old School Friend and I, on the Southern Upland Way, a distance of 15.5 miles, according to my phone.

How many steps is that?” asks a friend with a fitbit, when I tell her where I’ve been.

“No idea, but thousands because I have short legs and take tiny steps,” I tell her.

The Southern Upland Way, Scottish Borders. Pic: J Christie

“Like a geisha?” she says.

More like someone who’s easily distracted and has to guard against disappearing down a ravine when turning their head to catch the chat which is being whipped away by the wind whistling across the moor.

As the miles disappear the conversation ranges from routes to sandwich fillings (Old School has brought an envy inducing potato sandwich) to sex (Country Girl is expounding on grouse lekking but also on an advice column in which couples recount their sex lives and I’m having trouble differentiating, especially when she imitates the call of the grouse, causing four young females to break cover and race off across a field in fright, no doubt as confused as me).

Cairn on Twin Law, between Lauder and Longformacus, on The Southern Upland Way. S Waugh

We’d see more animals if we talked less - I’ve given up ever surprising an otter - but we’ve spotted plenty - badgers, deer, foxes, hares, squirrels, rabbits, weasels, and birds, from curlews to cuckoos, as well as plants – “Granny’s Toenails,” says Country Girl, pointing out a yellow and red petalled flower (I’m sure she makes them up).

Even livestock are entertaining when you’re walking with women who know their sheep. Country Girl used to keep Shetlands, of which she was fond, despite her habit of occasionally eating them (“That’s Fergus in the freezer”), and Old School has a book of sheep breeds on her work desk, which doesn’t surprise me as much her colleagues in education, since when we were at school she’d occasionally arrive muddy from righting a ‘yow’ upended on its back in the field beside her bus stop.

“Ugh. Texels,” says Country Girl, as we pause by a field of gargantuan sheep. “Meat machines.”

“Aye,” says Old School. “Ugly. Like pit bulls. Or those muscly gadgies who spend too much time at the gym, with thighs that squeak together when they walk.”

A waymarker on The Southern Upland Way. Pic: J Christie

Silenced by this image, we examine the map, which is when the smallest mammal of all, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shrew, fast and furious, races across our path. The tiny, but top, sighting of the day.