This 10km circular walk was topped and tailed by stops at the Riverside Bakehouse in the tiny hamlet of Abbey St Bathans. The café and bakery is run by Aliona who first came to Scotland from Russia in 1999. As well as serving light lunches, she bakes and sells bread on the premises using locally grown flour. This is one of the many small businesses throughout Scotland that we’ve used and loved over the years that we hope against hope will survive the current crisis.
Our walking guidebook instructed us to return to the road, turn left to pass the timber yard and arrive at “Toot Corner”. What? Well, we knew it when we saw it!
From here, a signpost directed us through woodland to the lower slopes of Cockburn Law. The unusual Retreat House, a circular late 18th century hunting lodge, could be seen below.
Brochs are Iron Age drystone roundhouses unique to Scotland, but Edin’s Hall is one of only a few found outwith the Highlands and Islands. Its central space is also unusually wide with relatively thin walls, suggesting that it is unlikely to have been roofed. Perhaps more of a small fort than a broch?
Descending the hill on the other side of the broch we came to the Elba Footbridge across the Whiteadder Water.
The rest of the walk was on minor roads and farm tracks until we arrived back at the Riverside. Sheep were abundant!
This was the second last day of our 2019 Berwickshire break, so just one more post to go. This one is linked to Jo’s latest Monday Walk post.
I preferred the children’s Fairy Trail …
There was still a lot of afternoon left, so we decided to visit nearby Bughtrig Garden as well. Bughtrig, which means farm on a ridge, has belonged to only three families in its traceable history 
The formal garden, however, is a delight and we spent some time wandering about, as well as relaxing on these rather unusual loungers (which were quite tricky to get off).
Just inside, a woodland path led up to the 218m summit of Duns Law. As we climbed, we could see the castle gateway below us with the Cheviot Hills behind it.
On the hill’s flat summit is a Covenanters’ Stone, which marks the spot where General Alexander Leslie raised the Covenanters’ standard in 1639 in defiance of King Charles I’s imposition of Episcopalianism on his Scottish subjects.
We descended part-way, then struck off across the flank of the hill where we passed a stone on the site of the old town of Dunse (sic), destroyed in the border raids of 1588. We could also see the castle peeking through the trees below us.
This third visit to Eyemouth may have ended our holiday, but there are several gaps still to fill in. There’s much more information about this part of Scotland to come.
The path reached the road at the upper part of Burnmouth. As the old sign tells us, it’s 6 miles to Berwick and 52 to Edinburgh. The pub is The First and Last – the first or last in Scotland, depending on your direction of travel.
After spending the afternoon in Eyemouth we had to walk back. Remember The First and Last in Burnmouth? We naturally stopped for a beer and some good pub grub. I liked the way it was decorated with old advertising boards.
On a hill overlooking Eyemouth Harbour, there is also a commemorative wall, built in 2017, with each lost man represented by a pebble at the base.
The town’s small museum has more information and displays about the disaster. (These are all fairly terrible pictures because of reflections in the glass cases.) The poster below has a quote from Alex Burgon, Skipper of the Ariel Gazelle – “We’ll not see Eyemoth today boys”. The men clearly knew what was coming. Pickit Men by Emma Mackenzie (2010) has a figure for each of the 129 Eyemouth men lost, standing together in their crews. Pickit is a Scots word meaning plucked. “Ye wad juist think that they had been pickit” was a frequent comment made about the men at the time.
Burnmouth is the last village on Scotland’s east coast before crossing the border into England. It’s also one of those divided villages with a steep, winding road down to the harbour. We booked a cottage in Lower Burnmouth for a week last July / August, and I was surprised to find that the small settlement around the harbour actually counts as four villages!
However, when we arrived we were very disappointed to find that it looked like this:
It would be some days before high tide was at a suitable time for us to see it, i.e. not while we were out during the day or while we slept. However, we found the view endlessly fascinating and have many pictures in different conditions of weather and tide. Here’s more from the main bedroom:
It’s one part of a memorial to the East Coast Fishing Disaster of 1881, of which we’d never heard, and we made it our mission to track down the other three sculptures. The whole of my next post will be dedicated to the disaster.
Benbecula is a small island – eight miles by eight miles – squashed between North and South Uist in the Outer Hebrides. It’s generally flat, more loch than rock, with its high point, Rueval, at 406 feet not much of a challenge. Still, we climbed to the top and here I am gazing out at the landscape spread before me. For the full story see 