Jedburgh - a Queen and an Abbey

The sun, muted by our thick cream curtains, is coaxing us to get up.  We’ve seen little enough of it this spring – mid May and until today, still bitter cold, winds like carving knives on our faces, rain – hail even – battering the seedlings Bill has so carefully tucked into the soft black soil. But today the sea is a dreaming blue vista, breathing with a soft, slow swell.  And we rush about throwing bags, boxes, rucksacks in the car.  Why on earth are we leaving all this to go on holiday?  Why not just a bike, a book and one of those sheltered, bluebell fringed coves around the island, pink sand peeping from among red rocks, softly curvaceous where the millennia have caressed them.  But no, today we’re camping our way to France.  It will be worth it.  It will.

The M8 is quiet, the trailer tent towing easily, the sun glinting.  Grass and trees are making up for lost time, elegant in pale greenery.  Primroses, tulips, even daffodils still fresh and new. 

Lauder Kirk

Lauder Town Hall

The Borders is relatively new territory for us – a fertile, rolling landscape, houses with crowstepped gables, windows edged red, blue, grey, a white church with an octagonal tower, Lauder’s ancient town hall, standing tall astride the narrow main street.  

Jedburgh – the first overnight stop.  A grassy pitch right beside the Jed Water, flowing quietly just now, but flood defences of rubble in metal mesh boxes tell another story.  Jedburgh’s main street twists then straightens itself for the long haul up to the castle and jail at the top.  Neat little shops punctuate its progress.  An ironmongers, a deep cave of delights for Bill, tools and gadgets stacked to the ceiling.  A coffee shop – little round tables, pyramids of hand made chocolates on wooden shelves.  

Bill at Mary Queen of Scots' House

Down a side street, we find Mary Queen of Scots’ house, where she stayed briefly, became ill and nearly died – and later said she wished she had died there, rather than face the crescendo of tragedies that followed.  Its yellow, rough stones, rounded tower and attic windows evoke her era with ease, a museum tells her dramatic and confusing story.  It houses her death mask, showing a truly beautiful, youthful face, surprisingly peaceful considering her life and her death at the hands that ruthless cousin of hers.  Elizabeth of England is much vaunted – films, documentaries, books.  But I see her as a calculating, cunning, albeit brilliant woman who was willing to imprison the monarch of a neighbouring country for 18 years and then murder her.

Jedburgh Abbey is closed, but through black metal fencing we can see a vast edifice, beautiful even though ruinous.  What a hive of activity it must have once been, what a dynamic heart of this whole area.  Tomorrow we’ll explore, read the many notices we can see, imagine what it once was.  And then we’ll move on, cross the border, see what England has to offer.

Jedburgh Abbey