Flashes from the Past: The Scottish Borders

Awoke in Edinburgh, what an amazing city! Though we experienced very little of it this trip, our drives to and from the city center to pick up a car, I recalled took many times and places: one such was one of Chuck's birthdays. Another enjoying High Tea with Jamie and Jennifer at the George Hotel. It isa glorious city and I could spend days there, but we were off to the Borders.

The three of us travel rather like hobbits, stopping for mid-morning coffee and a sweet as hobbits enjoy second breakfast. What you see is a sandwich of macaroons with a filling of thick English cream and raspberries! Amazing! 

 

Next stop in the exquisite hills of the Borders, was Abbotsford, the home of Sir Walter Scott. We'd visited there years ago and found a great house on a human scale, congenial, personable and warm. The house itself is being refurbished, but the gardens were open. Here is one charming, small corner of a walled garden.

  

After locating the house where Bill and Mary's daughter-in-law had lived as a child, we traveled on through the green, rolling hills and gentle valleys to Hawick-pronounced 'Hoik'--and located our B&B, then raced off to the ruins of Jedburgh Abbey. (I'd once seen it passing by on a bus.) Only an hour there to take pictures, but it was enough. Mary and I were the only ones around; it was lovely and peaceful, a blessing, truly.

 

I am finally in Scotland again; I am so pleased tears can easily come to my eyes. Sometimes I just let them.