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 […]

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 […]

I recently read a book which talked of places that exist beyond any map, and it got me thinking. If you look at a map of the River Tweed, you’ll see how to travel from one point to the next, but it doesn’t tell you that up on the high street was a shop run […]

My first memory of the Scottish Borders was seeing a hedgehog in the garden of the house we first lived, near the Old Peel Hospital on the banks of the River Tweed. My mum woke me up to see it and we put out a dish of milk. I remember drinking elderflower cordial for the […]

Travelling through Tweedsmuir, you’ll find an old inn at a bend in the road where hills, travellers, and stories have met for centuries. It’s called The Crook Inn, and one of its most memorable characters was a woman known as Jeanie O’ the Crook. Jeanie Hutchison was born at the inn in 1807, daughter of […]

The house and estate of Makerstoun was home of the Makdougall family for many years. In 1860, following the death of Sir Thomas Brisbane, it was inherited by Maria Scott Makdougall, a spinster, 76 years of age. Miss Makdougall was a staunch teetotaler who now found herself in possession of one of the finest wine […]