LEJOG Day 63: Jedburgh to St Boswells

Weather: Rain without end all day!

Distance covered today: 18.6km (11.6mi)

Last night's B&B: Allerton House (£55)

Cumulative distance: 1261.0km (783.5mi)/ % Complete: 65.9%

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 63 (click!)

At about 2.30pm I made an executive decision. I was wet through and the rain hadn’t stopped, or even shown signs of stopping from the time I left Jedburgh. In the weather forecast this morning, there was a single finger of heavy rain across southern Scotland, precisely at my location! It was moving slowly eastward, but not changing latitude, so it looked ominous. It does seem that the extraordinary good luck that I had with the weather over the first half of this journey has finally deserted me. I’m still hoping that July will see a change for the better, but even if it does rain regularly from now on, I will still have had more than my share of excellent weather.

Anyway, at 2.30, I decided that there just wasn’t any point in doing a rather extensive dogleg down to the River Tweed, and I took on a B-road instead, which led me directly to tonight’s B&B. I had been following the route of St Cuthbert’s Way which seems to meander rather more than was strictly necessary, especially in this locality. Perhaps I had been spoiled by the Romans! Dere Street has been a constant and arrow-straight companion since I left the Pennine Way, and in fact would have been the logical route to St Boswells, but it suddenly turned itself into the A68, a very busy trunk road to Edinburgh, and St Cuthbert’s Way veered off to the river as if in fright!!

I arrived at the lovely Mainhill House, to be greeted by my hostess, Ann, who simply and peremptorily took all my clothes and hung them in front of the Aga in her kitchen (fortunately, there were some dry clothes in my backpack!). I am though, very much persona grata, because Ann was having trouble with her computer, and I was able to fix it, so I have now been granted permission to use her wifi, despite a stern warning both on the phone and when I first met her, that the computer was out of bounds to guests, because of unfortunate prior experience! In fact I have just been summoned to the kitchen to view a slideshow of her grandson’s 21st birthday, in great detail, because finally, she is now able to see the photos on her PC.
 
She is hard of hearing, and absolutely delightful. She hails originally from Hampshire and talks in the authoritative tones of a woman of substance, with an accent that could cut glass. She clearly doesn’t need the income from the Bed & Breakfast, and tells me that she uses the money to take her grand-children on holiday every year. Her husband died of a heart attack about five years ago. Her children live mostly in the south (her son is an extremely busy vicar in London), and she doesn’t see as much of them as she would like.  Although she has lived here for 10 years, I get the impression that she is lonely and the B&B is a way of meeting people. They decided to move here to buy a farm for their son, and this lovely house and garden came with the farm, but at the last minute, after they were committed, he got a position at the Loseley Estate, very close to our home in Surrey. They had to move on their own.  She says that her friends from the south used to visit regularly but now find it very difficult to visit as the journey is just too long for older people. She is herself now completely dependent on public transport, and I suspect she doesn’t get around much. She is driving me down to the pub for supper in a short while, so I hope that those skills are up to the task!

As you will have gathered, the feel of the place is completely different from the B&Bs I have been staying in on the Pennine Way. Most of those places were closely associated with the Way and were advertised in an official document provided by the Pennine Way Association. The people using them are walkers and are fairly similar in their requirements. Now I am veering off into unknown territory. As I approach Edinburgh, I expect the B&Bs will take on a much more commercial character and will cater for working people rather than wanderers like me. It will probably feel more like Cheshire or Bristol, and the quality will be much more variable, given the eccentric manner in which I selected them (focussing almost exclusively on location, rather than facilities or recommendations). No matter; it should offer all sorts of opportunities to meet people other than walkers!

In fact, I won’t actually get to Edinburgh itself. My policy has anyway been to avoid cities, so I will carefully be wending my way from south of Edinburgh to north of Glasgow, where I will pick up the West Highland Way, my next national trail. After a few days, I will doubtless be moving into a much more populous part of the country, which will be the biggest change from the almost complete isolation of the past couple of weeks. I will be interested to see how I react.

The abbey in Jedburgh in the evening sunshine

Another view of the abbey at sunset

Something new!

Lawn-mowers, Scottish style. I met a fellow coming out of his house across the road and asked him how they removed the sheep-dung from the rugby field before playing. He looked non-plussed at the question and eventually said disdainfully that it sort of gets smoothed in! Southerners!

It's high summer now, but still the verges are alight with colour

I was told what this is, but I have of course, forgotten!

The Jed Water

The Teviot

A suspension footbridge across the Teviot in Teviotdale

The strange Monteviot Estate, the home of the Marquess of Lothian, the Tory, Michael Ancram, head of the Kerr Clan

The forest around the estate

Back to Dere Street, stretching straight and true into the distance

800 years ago, the monks of Melrose Abbey erected a great stone here beside Dere Street, which became known as Lylliot Cross. For 10 years the Scottish and English crowns met here to try to resolve disputes by negotiation, but of course, they failed. It's all a legend, but by 1743, The name Lilliard's Edge was ascribed to the place. No inscription survived, but the Rev Milne of Melrose quoted the following lines:

Fair maiden Lilliard lies under this stane

Little was her stature, but great her fame,

On the English loons she laid mony thumps,

And when her legs were off, she fought upon her stumps

.

She may have been a myth, but she represents the heroism of thousands of women on both sides of the border who endured the long drawn out wars of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries.