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 […]

Circus parade My mother-in-law remembered circuses on the village green in Norham in the 1930s, and parades of elephants – chained together – arriving from Berwick! Misty memory A foggy damp February morning with Vicar Rob beside the river in Norham for the annual Pedwell Prayer An exciting sighting Spotting egrets at the Lees beat […]

This isn’t really a story, but myself and my daughter are planning on walking the length of the Tweed in 2028, once the whole trail has been finished. We are hoping to complete it in around four or five days. I will come back in hopefully a year’s time to say we did it! [Wishing […]