Autumn transforms the Tweed into something truly special. Light dances across the river’s surface, leaves drift downstream and familiar places take on an entirely new character. Whether viewed from a hilltop, followed along a winding riverside path or experienced from the water itself, the landscape is constantly changing. What makes autumn along the Tweed so […]

Alicia and Lyndsay from Galashiels Girls Brigade talk about the crossing of the Tweed during the annual Riding of the Commons event at Galashiels. Watch the video below!  

The River Tweed begins its flight In Lowther Hills so wild and bright, From Tweed’s Well high among the land, It winds eastward through Scotland’s strand. For ninety-seven miles it flows, Past hills where purple heather grows, Through Borders valleys, green and wide, With shining waters as its guide. By Peebles, Melrose, Kelso fair, Its […]

The Cross Keys Coaching Inn, in the centre of Kelso, was built by James Dickson of Ednam House in 1769. It was a well-patronised coaching inn when Kelso became a staging post for those travelling between Edinburgh and London. Coaches would pass under the (now built up) main front entrance of the hotel on Kelso […]

This extract from Samuel Smiles’s The Lives of George & Robert Stephenson (1874) points to Kelso’s connections to the pioneering railway engineers of the world’s first Industrial Revolution. ‘In the evenings, after his day’s labour at his [Killingworth Colliery near Newcastle] engine, he would occasionally employ himself for an hour or two in casting ballast […]

On 18 July 1883, the Border Advertiser reported on the funeral of 85 year old Esther Faa Blythe, Queen of the Gypsies, which had taken place the previous Sunday afternoon. The paper wrote: Devotional exercises were previously performed in the house of the deceased in Horsemarket, Kelso, by the Rev G.S. Napier in presence of […]