Bordering on the Inaccessible!

The Scottish Borders region is a gem, largely by-passed and undiscovered by all but the most intrepid traveller. Largely devoid of its industrial past, its towns remain surprisingly busy and even prosperous - as is the beautiful, unspoilt countryside surrounding them, dotted with well-kept villages and historical houses, castles and abbeys. Right through the middle runs the mighty River Tweed - rising in the Moffat hills in the west, then flowing through Peebles, Innerleithen, Selkirk, Melrose, Kelso and Coldstream en route to the North Sea at Berwick - forming the actual English border for some of its' course. With the exception of the Teviot, most of its tributaries have the suffix, water, rather than the usual prefix, river...


The area is of course by-passed because of the lack of a decent road network, and the complete absence (since the 1960s) of a rail network. While there is talk of reinstating the latter south from Edinburgh to Tweedbank, between Galashiels and Melrose; and the A7 is signposted as a 'tourist route' to Edinburgh off the M6 near Carlisle and perhaps the A68 is also, from the Newcastle area; even the merest glance at a map reveals so many twists, turns and gradients - that few choose these routes after a lengthy drive from the more populous parts of England.


So you might have thought - given the ongoing absence of any railway link - there would be a decent bus terminal at Galashiels, the main town (as much because of its central position as anything else). Well - think again...


Now, lets take a moment get this into some kind of proper perspective - because when you consider the number of awful bus stations dotted around the country, this really takes some doing: Galashiels wins first prize, in my opinion, of the grottiest, most cramped, least user-friendly, most unfit for purpose and desperately needing replacement bus station - that I have ever come across...


The site is triangular - hemmed in by a town centre by-pass road (with room for a single track railway line on the far side, should the Borders Rail Link project ever come to fruition - that's surely what you call wishful thinking, on the part of the town planners!); a supermarket car park; and Gala Water - one of those rivers that aren't actually called rivers. Evidently, it also gets used as a bus depot these days, and most probably to encourage local youth to vent their frustrations of boredom elsewhere, the whole is fenced in by one of those metal grey, spiked affairs. Likewise, the windows in the single-storey chalet-type building are all covered with sturdy wire mesh...


You're not warming to it really, are you?


There are six stances arranged in a straight line in front of the building - which buses are required to reverse out of in the usual fashion. In itself, that would be fine - if there weren't spare buses parked in every available space - such as in all the corners, and parallel to the northern boundary fence - in what might otherwise be considered the reversing space. Hence most manouvres require multi-point turns, within the tightest of spaces!


Within the building are public toilets - which cost an exhorbitant 30p to enter (hence I usually go elsewhere in the town, for free), a drivers mess room, and a tiny waiting room - just enough space for four seats. The latter is usually closed. Outside is more seating - under cover, but only just! There isn't really any room to queue and pass at the same time - resulting in frequent collisions between would-be travellers. Above each stance is a metal sign which I imagine is supposed to tell you which buses call there - only, unless you happen to have some local knowledge, most of them do nothing of the sort!


Then the best bit - remembering there's no enquiry office of any description - is that there are no timetables. It doesn't even look as though there ever were, as there are no display cases - save for one at the end, which gives details of Munro's Border Courier services - one bus in each direction per day, Monday to Friday, between Peebles and Borders General Hospital, plus another from Eyemouth - that serves different villages on different days of the week. That's it!


So how, pray, are you meant to know which stance to wait at - and for how long - for the mostly 30-minute service to Edinburgh via Stow, or the 30-minute service to Edinburgh via Peebles, or the frequent services to Selkirk, Hawick, Carlisle, and Melrose - running by several different routes? Not to mention the very frequent town services, or the hourly services to Earlston and St Boswells - with their various extensions to Lauder, Oxton, Duns, Berwick, Kelso and Jedburgh; or even the daily National Express service to Wrexham (yes, I did say Wrexham)!


Fortunately, I did know that my number 60 bus departed from the 'via Melrose' stance, and sure enough, our bus emerged from a corner parallel to the building, pulled forward, then back, then forward, then back again - and a total of eleven points later, eventually pulled into the correct bay! What I didn't know was which route it took 'via Melrose' however - and it was just as well I resisted my thought to pick it up from what I thought was it's first stop on the way out of town, as it didn't go that way at all! Instead, we took a pleasant run along the north bank of the Tweed, crossing the river by a single-track arched bridge just east of Tweedbank, before looping through the grounds of the relatively new Borders General Hospital...


Melrose - whose parish is home to some of my earliest traceable ancestors - is a pleasant town indeed. Of all the border abbeys, Melrose's is the most complete, and there's the added attraction of half the former railway station to look at, too! We then passed through the village of Newstead, scarcely fitting through its steep, narrow main street; before emerging on the A6091 just short of Leaderfoot roundabout - named of course, after the famous (former) railway viaduct which crosses the Tweed valley just to the north - at its' confluence with the Leader Water - which gives its name to Lauderdale, and the town of Lauder, of common riding fame...


A few miles up the A68 - now largely built upon the former Berwickshire Railway trackbed; we passed though the attractive village of Earlston - where it is possible to connect with of of Munro's awful vehicles to Edinburgh, Jedburgh or Kelso. If Gala's bus station is the worst-ever, then Munro of Jedburgh's single-deck buses are the worst-ever vehicles - rendering the Borders an even less atractive proposition to would-be daytrippers. They are the usual modern low-floor affairs - inoffensive enough to look at - but boy, that all changes when you try to find a seat you can actually fit into...


Now, these are not busy services. Apart from Edinburgh and Dalkeith, none of the communities they serve have a population much greater than six or seven thousand. So why, oh why, do they feel the need to squeeze in as many of those horrid, hard, narrow seats as they possibly can? I may be quite tall, but my thighs are short in proportion to the rest of my body - and there are just two places in those vehicles I can sit with any semblance of comfort - right at the front, or right at the back! In any other part of the bus, I need an aisle seat - so that I can put one knee out in the aisle itself, and point the other towards the window. There is absolutely no way I can sit forward at all - and when you consider a goor proportion of the passengers using these routes are people younger than I - most of whom are considerably taller; that's nothing sort of totally ridiculous...!


East of Earlston was new territory for me - at least on the west to east axis. I'd been down the A697 north to south road a couple of times in the late 1970s, but apart from that, the former county of Berwickshire had simply proved too difficult to get to.


Note the name - Berwickshire. Always a Scottish county, the town whose name it bears has of course been part of England since 1482 - though a recent local referendum has shown that over 70% of Berwick Upon Tweed's population wants the town to return to Scottish jurisdiction again! Absolutely everybody's talking about it!!


Our bus passed through two of its subsequent administrative centres, and if the most recent - the attractive but tiny, market town of Duns - seems unlikely; that's nothing when compared to Greenlaw! http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/greenlaw/greenlaw/index.html tells the story far more eloquently that I could - and shows the 'town hall' in a rather better state than it now appears - fenced off, boarded up, with weeds growing out of the masonry...


Duns is also terminus of two further bus routes to and from Berwick - and very occasional weekday journeys to places such as Coldstream, and Kelso. Indeed, one of the thrice-daily 34s was awaiting our arrival - giving a connection for Coldingham, Ayton and Eyemouth; and we met one of the 260s travelling in the opposite direction as we passed through the large village of Chirnside, which generated more passengers than everywhere else put together!

I'd never stopped in Berwick Upon Tweed before, but I shall certainly return - what a beautiful town! Built on quite a steep hill, the lower part is fortified against the once frequent English/Scottish raids and indeed, much of the enormous ramparts are walkable. Traffic on the main street also passes through a town gate, which is a rare feature indeed this far north. At the foot of the busy, but relatively uninspiring shopping area is the spired town hall - with roads passing on all sides; and below that are numerous narrow, winding roads leading to either the old town bridge or harbour - both of which are still in use. Many of the buildings are Georgian and pastel-painted - always a feature I've appreicated, as it really does brighten up what would otherwise be a fairly drab scene. There are also riverside walks at various levels, not to mention sandy coves and very Scottish-looking golf links!

Indeed, there are Scottish accents everywhere. The banks are Scottish, people are purchasing their goods with Scottish banknotes, they attend Scottish churches and Scottish league football matches - English voices seem very much in a minority. So perhaps it is little wonder the locals are voting to return to Her Majesty's northern kingdom, once more.

On the down side, I couldn't find Chapel Street. The main bus stops in Golden Square - not so much a square as a part of the road leading to the Royal Tweed Bridge (that's the concrete one built in the late 1920s) said in their timetable cases that Eyemouth & Edinburgh buses left from Chapel Street - but gave no indication of how to get there; and neither did any of the tourist town trail signs reveal where Chapel Street might be. So I walked up to the top of the hill, near the railway station (yes - it does have one, being on the main line south; and thinking of it, if they did restore Berwick Borough to its former Scottish county, the Scottish Borders council area would no longer be bereft of a railway station - that'd be much cheaper than reopening the line to Tweedbank! I do hope nobody thinks of that...), and caught my next bus there...

Eyemouth is in some respects a smaller version of Berwick - vaguely reminiscent of West Cowes and Lynmouth too - I guess because of its' slightly north-easterly facing aspect, and the fact that its' docks straddle the mouth of a river. As a mark of respect to its tragic history of losing large numbers of fishermen to rough seas, I had a piece of fish from the chippie - with most of the batter removed, as per my eating regime - and lovely it was too. Then I walked along the stunning cliff-top coastal path as far as beautiful Coldingham Bay, and into historic Coldingham village, where I caught the last 253 of the day home to Edinburgh.

So of Berwick and Berwickshire I can only say, make the effort to go there and spend some time there - you won't be disappointed! As for me, I shall be back...