Aside from all the golden nuggets I imagined I'd find in Galashiels with the archives, I felt that Kelso would be the highlight of my trip because it's my grandpa's hometown. I had found the entry for his birth registry, so I even had the address he was born at. For me, this was not just the homeland, but the heartland--I loved my grandpa so much and miss him a lot, so it was really special to finally get to go to the place where he was born and lived for at least some part of his life.
Travelling to the town from Galashiels was interesting. We travelled by bus because there is currently no train service to Kelso. The bus trip includes travelling through St Boswells, the town where my great grandparents married, but I read that the original parish was torn down and that a new one was built in a different location, so I didn't bother stopping there to visit the church. The archivists had told me that as you get closer to Kelso, the land is slightly less hilly and more arable, so you find more crop farming there. Indeed, not only were there more crops, but the landscape even somewhat resembled the prairies back home. It was still a bit hilly, like rolling hills, which isn't like the prairies, but the fields were more square-shaped as opposed to lots of other plots of farmland in the UK that tend to be all different shapes and sizes. I've always thought it looks so jumbled and confusing from the sky, as compared with the big, evenly sized square plots you'd see back home. They mainly sow barley and oats, not unlike the prairies, and I even started seeing more of the red and black cattle that my grandpa used to raise--I can't remember the breed at the moment. It was just wonderful to see that land and to see how the first couple of decades of my grandfather's life in Scotland really shaped the rest of his life from the crops he grew to the type of cattle he raised. He also always had border collies on the farm, and I never realised until a few years ago that they're called that because they were originally bred in the Borders region.
When we arrived, it was too early to check into our B&B, and I realised that the street where the bus stop is located is the same street on which my grandfather was born! So went to the place, which is now a fabric store, to just be in that place. The proprietor of the store was pretty happy that her store was able to be a part of my family history, the location anyway. She was really friendly, and she also told me about the cobblestone roads in the town centre that were installed in 1745 and are still in use. She added that one of the stones down Roxburgh Street has the horseshoe of Bonnie Prince Charlie embedded in it--as in, someone put the horseshoe into one of the cobblestones. The story goes that one of the Prince Charlie's horses threw a shoe off, and it was collected and placed in a cobblestone to commemorate it. We went looking for it but couldn't find it--and even Google was no help! So unfortunately, I haven't a photo of it, but you can see it here on this image website.
After this, we found a place to grab a coffee, called The Cream Chimneys, in the town square. We saw that they offered cream tea on the menu, so I ordered a scone with clotted cream and jam and a pot of Scottish afternoon tea blend. The tea was good, but it was the scone that really stole the show for me, hands down, the best I've had in the UK since I arrived. It was the perfect texture, as many I find tend toward being too dry, and it had a light sugary crust on top, just like my mom used to make. We really enjoyed that. When we were done, we walked up a gradual hill across an old bridge, built in 1804, that spans the place where the Tweed and Teviot Rivers meet. It's a gorgeous view, pictured above, and you can see a castle in the distance, a castle that turns out is the residence of the Duke of Roxburgh, and one of the largest castles in the UK that is still inhabited. My mom says that her dad used to say about his father that he had once kept horses for a duke or earl. We can't verify this now, but if that's true, I wonder if it was for the Duke of Roxburgh! It's certainly plausible, and the estate would have a record that we could check if we could access it, but I don't know how to access it, so that will likely remain a mystery. For now, I share scenes from the town. I took several swan photos--I love them, but so does my mom, so I thought she would enjoy seeing them, too. The town square also has a huge block of the granite used for the cobblestones. It's quite remarkable!
I didn't really have any plans for Kelso. Most of what there is to do around there requires a car because it's outside the town a few miles away here and there, but I just wanted to spend the night there. There's a beautiful abbey ruin, Kelso Abbey, there, another casualty of English invasions. It's beautiful by day, and hauntingly beautiful at night. The parts that are still left, it actually looks like a scary face from one angle, the way the windows are lit up. Sadly, my photo of it didn't turn out, but perhaps it would have been too spooky anyway.
We returned to The Cream Chimneys to grab cake and tea as we were still too stuffed from a huge breakfast at the B&B to eat much of anything for lunch. And then we were off to return home. We took the bus to Berwick upon Tweed to catch our train back to London. Right at the train station, there's a gorgeous bridge you can see as you near it, and it turns out it's the Border Bridge, demarcating the border between England and Scotland. I've only recently learned, since returning from our trip, that some of my ancestors were also born there, and while it's technically in England, it's a location that many Scots consider their own because, as they joke, it's north of Hadrian's Wall (the wall was built by the Romans to keep the Scots out).
Anyway, as parting words about my trip to the region in Scotland of my ancestors, it was wonderful to be there. As my husband said, the people are so jovial, and you feel that they're more laid back than the English tend to be. I may not get a chance to return to the region while I'm here as there are other parts of Scotland we'd like to explore, but I'm so grateful for this trip, for all the things I learned and all the family connections I've discovered, and for being able to get the "feel" of one of the places of my roots.
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