We arrived by train to Galashiels after our hefty morning of climbing Arthur's Seat. We later learned that train service to the town was only finished a couple of years ago. The train goes slowly because it makes a lot of stops along the way at many towns, so the trip takes about an hour in total from Edinburgh, which is still not bad. One of the stops is in Corebridge (alternative spelling, Gorebridge), where my great uncle, who died in WWII, was born; you couldn't really see much from the station, but it was neat to go through it and kind of know where it is, if nothing else. I was pretty excited to be in the region since it was the Borders region of Scotland, the part where my grandfather and his predecessors came from.
As excited as I was to get to the region, Galashiels itself was not really somewhere I wanted to go for sightseeing. The only reason we went there was that the Borders Family History Society archives are there, and to do any research, you need to make an appointment, which I had set up a couple of weeks in advance of our trip. Our first order of business was getting to our hotel, however, and our experience doing so gave us a good idea of what people are like in the region: extremely friendly and helpful. I'm pretty sure we looked like people from out of town, and the custodian at the train station, which is also a bus station, offered to help us get where we were going and advised us of what bus we should take and also spoke to the driver to ask him to let us off by the hotel, even though the bus doesn't actually stop there. When we were getting off the bus, a passenger at the front of the bus who had heard the conversation gave us advice about what direction to walk as we were getting off the bus, to ensure we'd know where to go--even though the hotel was visible from the street. It was just beautiful. It's similar in the rest of the UK, from what I know of other Canadians posted to some of the smaller towns, that you certainly get to see people's friendliness and hospitality in the smaller towns and rural areas rather than in the metropolises with busy people from all over the place. Galashiels definitely had this in spades.
Our hotel looked like a haunted house. The Kingsknowes Hotel has probably seen better days as our water pressure was like ocean waves, and the upholstery on the sofas in our room were a bit old and stained, but it was pretty in its own right. I've linked the hotel info so you can read more about the history of it. It was indeed an old mansion that's been converted. The area itself was really pretty, and through the trees across the river from our room, we could see the tops of an old castle or huge mansion of some kind, and it turned out to be a former home of Sir Walter Scott.
I found out about the Borders archives here several years ago, when I seemed to have come across my great grandmother's name in a poorhouse application that was listed on their website, but strangely, I can no longer find it. I was hoping to see it in a physical archive there, but while I couldn't confirm that information, the archivist--who had already been sending me findings since I initially contacted her to set up the appointment--had additional documents for me and had even drawn out by hand a family tree to help me keep straight some of the family members and connections. There were 3 ladies who volunteer in the archives section, and each of them actually helped look up information for me because their appointments didn't show. I couldn't believe how helpful everyone was--especially since I'm not a Society member. We've decided to make a donation to them just to thank them for all the work they did because it seems like you usually have to pay for photocopies and printing, and she seemed to provide everything to me for free. I have so much to go through that it will likely take my a couple of months at least to find time to sit and make sense of it all.
We didn't spend much time here since the goal was really only to go to the archives, and we left after we were done at the archives and had our lunch, onto the most exciting part of the trip for me, my grandfather's hometown. I've added a few photos of the countryside from the train. One thing I've noticed is that there seem to be old castles dotting the landscape everywhere, most of them in some state of ruin. I saw one looking out over a river with all the fall colours around, and it was almost magical, but I didn't see it in time to get a photo, unfortunately. The fall colours aren't as bright as in Canada, but I still think they're pretty.
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