When I booked into Robert Smail’s Printing Press in Innerleithen for a letterpress workshop, I needed some words to practise with. My friend, Lindsay Macgregor, is a gifted poet and she’d been commissioned to write a poem about Peeblesshire as part of an anthology of poems from across the UK. I think her riddle sums […]

Extract from an interview with Maurice Kukk who volunteers three days a week at the River Tweed Salmon Fishing Museum in Kelso. As part of the Tweed Stories project, oral historian, Harry Henderson recorded Maurice at the museum. Maurice was born in Coldstream in the early 1950s and brought up on a farm just over […]

Writer John Mackay Wilson (1804-35), who was born and lived in Tweedmouth, returned to his hometown to take up the role of Editor to The Berwick Advertiser in 1832. Two years later, he started publication of his Tales of the Borders, which became international bestsellers for the best part of 120 years. Sadly, Wilson died […]

At the meeting of the waters, you’ll still hear folks reminiscing about the time they used to picnic by the river before ‘the new bridge’ was built. Constructed in 1974 but still thought of as new and just as much maligned as the day it arrived. Along from here is Abbotsford House, historically important and […]

Garden cultivation in Scotland began in the 15th century, mainly among monasteries, royalty, and the wealthy. Early gardens were practical, growing herbs and food, and influenced by European styles. For example, Traquair House, Scotland’s oldest inhabited home by the River Tweed, features historic orchards and parkland. The 18th Century saw a surge in the creation […]

2025 marked the 250th anniversary of the birth of Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), one of Britain’s greatest and most influential landscape painters. Known for his dramatic skies and luminous watercolours, Turner transformed how we see nature. Turner was captivated by the Scottish Borders and painted several scenes along the River Tweed, capturing its serene […]