Awa'

The posts over the next few days will reflect on my week around the Scottish Border and Northumberland. I was staying here, at the West Lodge, Milne Graden, a lodge cottage extended at the back with a new kitchen and bathroom (they would have been hard to fit in the original building). The Milne Graden estate welcomes dog-walkers: it welcomes them fulsomely, and if you look carefully you might be able to spot the ceramic dogs in the windows of the Lodge. The house doesn't smell doggy, thankfully.







When I went to Berwick-on-Tweed the weather was gorgeous:

It was rather less good for a lot of the rest of the time ...

I made it down the coast to Bamburgh, Seahouses, and finally to Alnmouth, a place I've glimpsed from the East Coast Main Line for years and always found intriguing:

A trip to find Linhope Spout waterfall on Saturday took me into the hills, giving a sense of what the Northumberland National Park is like without having to walk ten miles into it:

And talking of weather, as I got up yesterday ready to speed to St Andrew's, Kelso - the only church for miles with an early service - so I could head off back home later in the day, a beautiful red sunrise greeted me. It proved to be the 'shepherd's warning' such meteorological phenomena are traditionally supposed to be ...

My wanderings through the week took me across the Border (the River Tweed) more times than I care to remember. As Scotland rumbles its way potentially towards independence from the UK, and perhaps with different customs arrangements from those pertaining south of the river - as opposed to just a few funny banknotes - the complexities of the matter become worryingly apparent.