Jessica was tired. She’d been attacked from all sides, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally. All she wanted to do was get back to a sense of normality. She dressed in warm clothes and wearily went down stairs. The sun was beginning to rise. She turned, her small dog looked at her, his head […]

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 […]

Ralph Holmes has a assembled a unique history of salmon net fishing on the Tweed. As part of the Tweed Stories project, oral historian, Harry Henderson interviewed Ralph about his family’s fish merchant business, Ralph Holmes & Sons, founded in Berwick the mid-1800s. Ralph explains the company’s relationship with the net fishermen on the River […]

Among Britain’s many working dogs, few have a history as intriguing – and as short‑lived – as the Tweed Water Spaniel. This sturdy, tawny‑coated dog lived along the River Tweed and the nearby coastline, where salmon nets, cold surf, and rocky shores shaped it into a powerful and reliable water worker. One of the earliest […]

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 […]

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 […]