Jedburgh to Melrose

22 April 2011 - Jedburgh to Melrose

Distance - 20 miles

Weather - Hot & sunny
We stayed at - Burts Hotel, Market Square, Melrose, Roxburghshire, TD6 9PL

Monteviot suspension bridge

Today was another longish walk, which mostly followed the St Cuthbert's Way using Dere Street. As you can see from this link, St Cuthbert's Way runs from Lindesfarne (Holy Island) to Melrose. The route out of Jedburgh was a bit fiddly to navigate, although it started well enough with a swift crossing of the A698, over a crash barrier and down to the riverbank to follow the River Teviot. Not long after joining this track, we came across the Monteviot suspension bridge, built as recently as 1999.

Lady Lilliard's Stone

Shortly afterwards, we skirted around Monteviot House and joined the B6400 for a bit, before rejoining Dere Street. After a while we passed the hill and loch associated with Baron's Folly, but perhaps more interestingly, Lady Lilliard's stone. The stone commemorates a Teviotdale girl named Lilliard, who to avenge the death of her lover slain by the Earl of Hereford's troops, took part in the battle of Ancrum Moor until she died of her many wounds. This whole area is renowned for the regular skirmishes that took part between the English & the Scots. At least for this afternoon's walk both nations were in harmony!

Dere Street peters out just before St Boswell's and so we had to take a slightly circuitous route along a lane to Maxton, in order to cut out the busy A68. We passed by a nice little church at Maxton, where after a few fiddly turns we ended up walking beside the River Tweed.

River Tweed & Eildon Hills

We could have left the St Cuthbert's Way and just continued trotting

Way to Eildon Hills

along beside the River Tweed all the way to Melrose if we'd liked, but it seemed rude to ignore the Eildon Hills, which had been lurking away in the distance all day. So we left the Tweed at Newton St Boswell and walked by the side of the Bowden Burn, passing the wonderfully named hamlet of Maxpoffle! It was 17:30 by the time we left Bowden and started walking through their picnic area and into the pinewoods. The hills themselves weren't that bad. The track actually went through a saddle on the ridge, rather than up over the top of one of the hills - for which I was grateful! Quite often, designers of long distance footpaths feel the need to make you walk up every single hill en-route, even if there is no view or the route itself is uninteresting.

View from Eildon Hills

Even from the saddle though there were brilliant views of the

Melrose Abbey

surrounding countryside and of the town of Melrose below. It was 18:30 before we saw Melrose Abbey just below us, then reached the town and headed for the hotel bar!