After getting up the following morning, we made our way to the airport and rented our car for the week, and then headed south for the Border Abbeys. The Border Abbeys consist of Melrose Abbey, Jedburgh Abbey, Dryburgh Abbey, and Kelso Abbey, each in various states of ruin - although each has its own charm about it.
One of the more immediately noticeable differences between Scotland and England, and most other places for that matter, was that the Abbeys (and most other sites, for that matter), which are among the most visited attractions in Scotland, are not very well signposted, which meant that we casually cruised past Melrose Abbey and Dryburgh Abbey on our way down to Jedburgh Abbey. Jedburgh Abbey dates from 1138 when it was founded by King David I. I've tried to label the abbey pictures below so that you can tell which one is which. One of the cooler bits for us was that each of the castles and abbeys that we visited was having kind of a hunt for kids - they had a questionnaire and the kids had to go around and find pictures of people and answer the questions. If they answered all the questions, they got a badge, with people like Robert the Bruce, or Mary Queen of Scots.
After Jedburgh, we headed back up to our abbeys that we missed - Melrose, where the heart of Robert the Bruce is supposedly buried and founded in 1136, and Kelso, which is the smallest, and founded in 1113. We then headed over to Dryburgh Abbey, where Sir Walter Scott is buried and stopped off at Scott's View along the way. All I've talked about so far is the abbeys, but in between the abbeys were several stretches of absolutely beautiful countryside, replete with the burnished colours of autumn, and Scott's View was simply astounding. Supposedly, a picture is worth a thousand words, but quite frankly, even the pictures fail to capture the essence of being there and seeing the scenery. There is simply nothing to compare with being there in the moment and seeing the vivid colours, breathing the crisp air, and seeing the sheer magnificence of God's creation all around you. Scott's View is located towards the top of a hill, where Walter Scott often paused to look out at the countryside. When he was buried, his funeral procession paused here, as he so often did in life.
We ended the day at Dryburgh Abbey, before returning again to Scott's View for another look, and then returning to Edinburgh for the evening, and dining at The Elephant House, where J.K. Rowling came up with the idea for Harry Potter.
2 comments:
Really fantastic! I will have to show these pictures to Russ. You were blessed to be there not in the tourist season. Did you have the places to yourself?
It's funny - everyone that I told about our plan to go to Scotland was really skeptical. Bad time of year and all that. It was beautiful, and yes, for the most part, we were either the only ones, or just part of a small group. I thought it was a great time to go - perhaps a bit chillier, but the autumn colours were simply fantastic.
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