In June 2026, the Albert Watson Memorial Hut, a bike bothy at Tweedsmuir, needed a new roof. The hut was built in 1947 for a Glasgow cycling club and is still used with permission by cyclists wanting overnight accommodation. The cost of the roof repairs was about £3,000, and I estimated I could get 60 […]

Icebergs on the Tweed During the hard winter of 2010 I was driving into Kelso and was astonished to see little icebergs floating down the river! I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, but I think the council was clearing the snow from the roads upriver and tipping it into the Tweed. An unexpected arrival […]

Hay Lodge Park, Peebles. Wild Writers Festival, Eastgate January 2026. It was sleeting but I’d paid for my guided wild swim at the Dookits, so I was determined to do it! Ingrid was so reassuring and the whole experience was magical – especially when two deer jumped in just nearby and swam across the river. […]

My partner is involved in the Borders Forest Trust, so we decided to go for a walk at Carrifran near Moffat. They said there was a chance we might see golden eagles. At that moment, I looked up and there were TWO golden eagles circling overhead! Carrifran Woodland. [I love] Walking and skinny dipping in […]

Some years ago I rode across the new concrete Crownhead Bridge near Dawyck on my bike. It was sometime around midnight or one o’clock in the morning. The moonlight was dappling the ripples in the river as I cycled along – it was so beautiful and quiet. Then suddenly I heard a pitter-patter, pitter-patter…I looked […]

We crossed the pass in looping bends and followed the road as it twisted down through broad-shouldered, sheep-grazed hills into Tweeddale. Tweed’s Well, the source of the Tweed, was simply marked by a road sign pointing seemingly nowhere but honouring a drip-fed spring pushing its pile of coins to the surface, and not much more […]