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]
