Such a familiar journey but always special. Childhood fun and a good pun with history and mystery. Read the poem, Royal Border Bridge, here. The Royal Border Bridge is one of Berwick-upon-Tweed’s most iconic landmarks, carrying the East Coast Main Line high above the River Tweed. Designed by the renowned Victorian engineer Robert Stephenson and opened […]

Here is a concrete representation of pool names on the Lower Teviot Pools between Roxburgh and Kelso. It was published in a pocketbook by Polygon in 2001 called ‘The Order of Things’. The River Teviot is the largest tributary of the River Tweed by catchment area. The Teviot is an important river for wildlife, especially the Atlantic salmon.

In 1978 I was called by the Langhaugh shepherd to help drag 150 Blackface sheep down to shelter. They were not able to move because they were weighed down by huge ice balls on their fleeces. We cut the ice off with a Swiss Army knife and dragged them down to a stell to shelter […]

I just wanted to share some of my childhood memories of swimming and jumping into the Tweed at the Dookits near Neidpath Castle, as well as at various other spots along the river. So many hours were spent during the summer holidays with gangs of friends, floating down the river on inner tubes, jumping off […]

Our young family were on holiday just outside Cornhill in the summer of 1986. One evening we were able to go out for an evening drink (Granny to the rescue – she had come with us on holiday!). As we were driving towards Cornhill someone was hitching a lift. We stopped and he hopped on […]

The sun had set. It was a perfect, calm, June evening, a few days before the solstice. In mid-stream, the river flexed and twisted as it flowed over unseen contours, but ahead of me, by the bank, was a still pool reflecting the evening sky. Under the Chainbridge, Swallows skimmed and hawked hunting for moths […]