Week 13: Melrose to Tweedmouth

 This week we followed River Tweed 48 km to the coast. The Tweed is known for having more Atlantic Salmon fished each season than any other river in the world. We leave Melrose and follow the river east (below).

Image: Andrew Locking, https://www.andrewswalks.co.uk/eildon-hills.html , no changes

Starting on the other side of the Eildon Hills (below) we head back towards St. Boswells, past the Roman camp of Milrighall at Melrose and on to the Roman Fort of Trimontium at Newsteads (below.) 

Image: https://www.u3ahadrianswall.co.uk/wordpress/newstead-roman-fort/ , no changes

Then we go past the monastery at Old Melrose, along Old Monk's Road, and past the river crossing at Monksford, below.

Image: Walter Baxter, https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1203133 , no changes

We pass through the sites of many Roman camps as we make our way along the Tweed to the coast and this route would have been used in the 7th century as well. 4 km from Trimontium are Roman camps at St. Boswells, 2 km further is a camp at Maxton, and at Roxburgh is a Roman station where a road comes up from Jedburgh. This area is one of the most fertile agricultural areas in Scotland and has been in use since Mesolithic times (below).

Image: JThomas, https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5113344 , no changes

A little farther along is Kelso, and Wooden Roman Camp where the Votadini tribe had their strongholds. The surname Maxwell comes from here, where a salmon pool was called Maccus's Wiel, meaning Maccus's pool. (below)

Image: cathietinn, https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5588598 , no changes

One of our Do-a-Thon participants was very excited to find out that we are walking in the footsteps of her family, as well as St. Aidan’s footsteps. She is learning more about the countryside they lived in every week!

Her mother’s side of the family can trace their roots to 1057 when King Malcolm III gave out land grants to those who supported him in the war for the Scottish crown, with several clans getting their start in the Kelso area.

Her great-great-great-great grandparents lived and worked here through the 1700s / early 1800s during the First Industrial Revolution when coal-powered steam engines created a demand for mass-produced textiles and furniture mills. Small village hand-knit and woven industries quickly turned into 50 massive mills and collieries (coal mines), changing the quiet farming villages forever.

The living conditions became unsanitary and unsafe. Open sewage and crowded living conditions were common in all cities and Cholera outbreaks killed many every year. Fires often devasted cities and working conditions were brutal – long hours and no safety regulations. Both of her great-great-grandparents died in their 40’s.

Many were forced to emigrate to Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the mid-1800’s because of the potato famine and the Highland Clearances. Shipbuilding was one of Newcastle-upon-Tyne’s major industries during the Second Industrial Revolution when steel became the new building material. Her great-grandfather ‘Nafty’ worked in the shipyards as a rigger on ships with masts and sails, and as a riveter on steamships made of steel. (below)

https://flickr.com/photos/newcastlelibraries/4076422158

12 km from Kelso is Carham (Kair means fortification, ham means homestead). There is another Roman camp here, and in 1018 the Battle of Carham was fought here. This battle between Northumbria and the combined forces of Malcom II King of Scots and Owen King of Strathclyde severely weakened Northumbria. Although the Northumbrian kings ruled over the whole area, the Kingdom of Strathclyde (formed by the native Celtic peoples during Roman occupation and converted to Christianity in the 6th century) stayed whole under King Oswald's rule, eventually being incorporated into the Kingdom of Scotland in the 12th century. 

Carham's Church of St. Cuthbert (below) is built upon the site of a much older church, where St. Cuthbert is supposed to have built a daughter house of Lindisfarne. The border between England and Scotland runs down the center of River Tweed, so that the photographer of the image below is in England and the people across the river are in Scotland.

Image: Walter Baxter, https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/6389337 , no changes

Heading along the river 5 km to Coldstream, we walk along the riverside part of Coldstream Country Walk from Wark to Coldstream. This village grew up at the lowest point of the Tweed where there was a safe crossing (below). Unfortunately for Coldstream, this meant that Scottish and English troops fought back and forth through the village for centuries as they crossed the river to extend their borders.

Image: DS Pugh, https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4158292 , no changes

 

13 km further along the Tweed is Norham, where it is said that St. Aidan crossed River Tweed at Ubbanford (which later was named Norham) on his way from Iona to Bamburgh in 635. St. Cuthbert's Church (below to the left, in the distance) is built on the site of a monastery and church built by King Oswy in 655 and it became an important part of Christian culture. When the monks fled Lindisfarne during the Viking attacks, they rested here with St. Cuthbert's body as they made their way inland.

Image: Maigheach-gheal, https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2610888, no changes

We end our walk in Tweedmouth, where there was another Roman fort. On the south side of River Tweed where it empties into the ocean is Spittal (short for hospital - a hospital for Lepers was built here in the Middle Ages). Hallowstell is here (meaning Holy Man's Fishery) where the monks claimed fishing rights for salmon (below, far right).

Image: M J Richardson, https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/6530838 , no changes

[wikipedia, ancestry.com, independent.co.uk, mouthofthetweed.co.uk, oldroadsofscotland.com, nationalchurchestrust.org, canmore.org.uk, roman-britain.co.uk, battlefieldstrust.com, co-curate.ncl.ac.uk, britainexpress.com]

Week 12: St. Boswells to Melrose

 The last bit of St. Cuthbert's Way is 12 km from St. Boswells, over the Eildon Hills and down into the village of Melrose. (below, looking from St. Boswells across River Tweed in the direction we will be walking.)

Image: Jim Barton, https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5849378, no changes

Soon we come across Dryburgh (below) where the Irish monk St. Modan built a chapel in 522 and was an abbot at the monastery that grew up around it. 

Image: Jum Barton, https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/6569914 , no changes

We leave St. Cuthbert's Way for a side trip to Old Melrose, following Monk's Trail along River Tweed (below) to the site of the monastery that St. Aidan built.

Image: Jim Barton, https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/6930081 , no changes

St. Cuthbert's Way has the following information about Old Melrose:

King Oswald had spent much of his youth on Iona and was a Christian and he wanted to bring the Christian message to the lands where he was King between 633 and 642 AD. He invited St Aidan and 12 monks from Iona to travel to Northumbria and St Aidan first established “Mail Ros” before setting off further to establish a monastic community on the Holy Island. 

One of the monks was St Boisil and he became the 2nd Prior of the “Mail Ros” monastery. On the death of St Aidan 651-652AD Cuthbert had a vision of Heaven and he travelled to “Mail Ros” and became a monk under the guidance of St Boisil, whom he then succeeded as the 3rd Prior. 

The name Melrose is thought to be derived from “Mail Ros”, this meaning “Bare headland” and was the description of the peninsula of land surrounded by the Tweed on three sides and separated from the rest of the land by the Earthen Vallum. (Below, the River Tweed flowing around the penninsula) At the time of the early monks the headland would have had few trees, hence the description “bare”. A monastic Vallum was typically a deep ditch or series of ditches that enclosed an early Christian monastery. They were common in northern Britain and Ireland in the 5th to 9th centuries. The Vallum served several purposes. It would have provides some defensive protection as well as helping to keep in the monastic livestock. It was also important symbolically to remind all that the monastery was a sacred, holy place, separated from the secular world. 

The Old Melrose monastery was burned to the ground in 839 by order of Kenneth MacAlpine, it was subsequently rebuilt and became one of the temporary resting points for the body of St Cuthbert. By 1073 the site was again in ruins and monks never returned for any period of time to this location. A chapel dedicated to St Cuthbert was however still in place on what is called “Chapelknowe” and this was a place of pilgrimage over the centuries. 

King David I is said to have had a castle on the west side of the Earthen Vallum overlooking the peninsula and in 1130 he granted the land to the Cistercian monks of Rievaulx. The monks arrived but indicated that they preferred to establish their monastery not at “Mail Ros” but 2 mile west at what is now the location of Melrose Abbey. King David granted this move along with the monks request that they should be allowed to still use the name “Mail Ros”, hence the reason for Melrose’s present name and that of the Peninsula land being called Old Melrose.

[ https://www.stcuthbertsway.net/History%20of%20Old%20Melrose.pdf ]

Back on St. Cuthbert's Way, we climb up to the saddle between the two main hills of the Eildon Hills. From the saddle it is a 15 minute walk to each of the summits. (Mid Eildon summit below left)

Image: Walter Baxter, https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/565802 , no changes

Eildon Hill North has a massive Iron Age Hill Fort on the summit, once the stronghold of the Votadini tribe until it was conquered by the Romans. Afterward it became a Roman signal station. In the valley below the Eildon Hills is Trimontium ('Three Hills'), the largest and most Northern Roman outpost and the center of Roman/Celtic activity in the area for centuries (below, the fields in the center). Dere Street passes right beside the fort and continues on through the Lammermuir Hills (below, in the far distance, behind Black Hill in the center of the photo) where St. Cuthbert lived as a child, looking after his master's sheep. It was there that he had the vision of St. Aidan's death that prompted him to come to the Old Melrose monastery.

Image: Jim Barton, https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/6850287 , no changes

We head down the steep trail of St. Cuthbert's Way to the village of Melrose, where the trail ends.

Next week we will follow the River Tweed back to the coast.

[St. Oswald's Way and St. Cuthbert's Way (Rudolf Abraham), faithincowal.org, wikipedia]