On the morning of the 28th of August, I left Edinburgh from the Rabbie's office on High Street with eight other people plus the driver, Emily. We were Americans, Germans, South Africans, and an Aussie, if I'm remembering correctly. It was a sunny and extremely windy day as we wended our way south to Walter Scott country.
The Scottish Borders (that is, the southern part of Scotland, bordering England) are often overlooked, quite unfairly. The Borders are mountainous, but differ in quality from the highlands in the more northerly part of the country. They're less rugged and more wide-open and rolling. They're also more forested than other areas of Scotland. For those reasons, they reminded me a bit of the Appalachian foothills in North Carolina.
Our first stop of the day was Scott's View, a scenic point near Earlston overlooking the three peaks of the Eildon Hills and the Tweed Valley, with the Cheviot Hills of England visible to the south.
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| goscotlandtours.com |
I was lucky enough to arrive in Scotland right at the height of the heather blooming, so the hills were almost completely purple.
After spending some time at Scott's View (so called because it was supposedly the favorite viewpoint of Sir Walter Scott), we descended from the hillside into Earlston, and walked through a forested area to the Wallace Monument. This is a different, less well-known monument than the famous one near Stirling, and features an unaccountably Roman-looking William Wallace:
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| myfinepix.com |
After that, we made our way to Melrose, following a picturesque route along the River Tweed.
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| bordercabs.co.uk |
Melrose Abbey is a ruined abbey, famous for being the resting place of Robert the Bruce's heart (the rest of him is buried in Dunfermline). We all wandered around the abbey ruins, and around the town of Melrose itself, for an hour or so. This was also our lunch stop. I sat in a little cafe and had my first Orkney ice cream in two years. Oh, how I missed it...
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| undiscoveredscotland.co.uk |
This is the part where the weather turned on us. In the single most impressive reversal of Scottish Weather that I have personally witnessed, it was sunny when I began climbing one of the abbey towers, and had clouded over and begun to rain by the time I got to the top about two minutes later.
After Melrose Abbey, we went to our final major point of interest for the day, Rosslyn Chapel. Made famous by The Da Vinci Code, it's got some very interesting architecture on the inside: Celtic and Masonic symbols galore. Included in the entrance fee was a talk by a lady whose exact relationship to the Chapel I cannot recall, but she had a lot to say about the supposed Masonic secrets Rosslyn Chapel is supposed to contain. No one is allowed to see under the floorboards, and theories abound as to what's down there: the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, Elvis Presley, etc. This picture is deceptive because it's actually quite a small church:
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| annerobertson.com |
It was very cold, rainy, and windy by this point, so I was glad to get back on the minibus and head back to Edinburgh. All in all, it was an enjoyable trip, if not as active as the Wild in Scotland trips I've been on, and it covered ground I hadn't seen before, which was the main attraction. I'm glad I went.
This has not been nearly as detailed as I would have liked, but my journal notes about this day are scanty and I've lost a lot of the fine detail. Photos of the Wild in Scotland trip are making their way onto Facebook, so I'm going to post about that trip soon.
Cheers, y'all.
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