by There is something inherently interesting about boundaries. That line on the map takes on extra spice when the two countries are locked in a constitutional stalemate.
The frisson between Scotland and England that I feel today as you scratch the surface of the rugged badlands once alive with smugglers and housewives, where past and present are intertwined, is no wonder. In borderlands, contradictions are the default; fixed positions are fluid.
Arriving on the train to Berwick-upon-Tweed I’m drawn straight into the enigma by a huge sign that litters the track. It reads ‘Royal Border Bridge’.
It is clearly a misnomer: the River Tweed is indeed a border, but it is the old Scottish one that Edward I crossed on his way to Berwick, then Scotland’s largest east coast port, in 1296.
The Scottish reaction to the massacre of civilians he commanded was furious and Berwick tore between the countries 13 times before he finally landed in 1482.
Artist Laurence Stephen Lowry (1887-1976) famously painted dreamlike scenes of his beloved Berwick, but you can’t miss the darkness, not when one of William Wallace’s broken limbs rests within the town’s walls.
A sign leads to the great Scotch Gate, put up to keep out the rest of me. It doesn’t stop me from going into the old town. Cornish pasties and Scotch eggs vie for top billing in the bakery – I buy both for a picnic lunch walking across the border in the spirit of culinary unity.
I don’t need a map to tell me I’m crossing a fault – in Berwick I find Union Jacks and St. George’s Crosses, but also a few Saltires.
The King’s Scottish Borderers march to the three, a Scottish regiment with an English museum, proud of a fierce history of fighting the Jacobites in Scotland, including Culloden.
The local football team, Berwick Rangers, are equally confused, languishing in the lower leagues of not England, but Scotland, their proudest day in 1967 knocking their Glaswegian names out of the Scottish Cup.
The sight of Berwick-upon-Tweed is unmissable – in every way – its vaulted fortified walls. They are one of the main attractions of historic England, the largest capital project of the reign of Elizabeth I and the most impressive contemporary walls left standing in Europe. But today it’s just me and a couple of dog walkers circling the bulging bastions.
The North Sea glowers before us. From across its waters, France, booming with Scotland in what De Gaulle once called “the oldest alliance in the world”, had threatened England for centuries.
The English Coastal Path soon reveals its magic. The Scottish Borders Council website tells me I’m also on the Berwick Coastal Path – even the way to the border is a dual carriageway.
Sandstone cliffs that have been poisoned by the North Sea in their pockets, and barriers full of sandy beaches drive me north. I’m in the Coast program, enjoying the bird’s eye view of the play, with seabirds joining me swimming on the thermals within striking distance.
The rain sweeps in ditch: a word that does not require translation into English; two countries united by one bad climate.
The Scottish border is as impregnable as the walls of Berwick. A vaulted sign rises in a giant Saltire welcoming me to Scotland. I ease across that line on the map and examine the English combat sign. Except I can’t – there isn’t one.
The English signatories may not have been fans of the border, but there were clearly smugglers on both sides. Through the mists I see the ‘Smuggler’s Bothy’ wandering suspiciously above a forgotten bay.
It came to light here when smuggling boomed in the 18th century following the Acts of Union. John Robertson, a famous East Coast smuggler, used to sell spirits in tea using the booth as a stage post.
On the way to Eyemouth, Fancove Head is the scenic highlight of the route. Surfing is booming, too many local boats are over. This is a coast of shipwrecks, broken hearts and broken lives.
Eyemouth, around the headland, was the site of Scotland’s worst fishing disaster in 1881, when 189 local men drowned. Many of them were lost in sight of the shore, safety and their families.
In Eyemouth – which became the main port in south-east Scotland after the loss of Berwick – each generation seems to struggle to understand the enormity of that tragedy.
There are three memorials, ‘Widow and Bairn’ the most significant pointing to the sea. In sharp bronze relief all widows and their widows are still searching for the lost. The tragedy may have faded into Eyemouth’s consciousness, but the local community has driven it forward. A fishing fleet continues to land haddock and shellfish, as well as an ongoing project to restore the shoreline for tourism.
The dark shadows of the past in the Border badlands refuse to settle in a shallow grave though. While I’m sitting outside at the sparkling restaurant, chippie and gelateria run by a dynamic Italian family, the Giacopazzis, on the part of the restored sea now kissed by the sun, Gunsgreen House looms across the bay.
John Adam and his family may be celebrated as Scotland’s greatest architectural dynasty, but it’s hard to believe that he wasn’t at least a little suspicious of the ‘trading smuggler’ John Nisbet.
Nisbet’s modern Gunsgreen House is like a child imagining a smuggling lair: hidden compartments, a fireplace escaping back to reveal a secret room, the cavernous cellars leading to underground channels and multiple floors connected by a hidden tea chute.
Dr. Derek Janes, historical consultant for Gunsgreen, made that ‘trader smuggler’ monitor of his. “Smuggling goes back a long way around the border,” mused Janes as we looked towards the hulk of Gunsgreen.
“Even the first cross-border train was stopped in the 1840s and illegal whiskey was searched. Nisbet joined the small army of smugglers pouring all kinds of contraband from the Low Countries, Norway and the Baltic. At one time smuggling was just what you did and it is said that more business was done underground in the cellars and secret passages than above.”
In the 18th century the nearest Scottish custom house was in Dunbar 20 miles to the north. I vaguely conjure up scenes of savvy smugglers scurrying around the tight winds of old Eyemouth and Keystone Cops look for comedy.
The reality was darker, as Janes points out: “They would use force if they had to. And certain parts of the system were affected. We are talking to everyone from the excise, to the chancellor John Nisbet, who was the nephew of Daniel Dow, a customs officer at Eyemouth.”
Gunsgreen House is currently closed to the public. I’m hoping it’s because they’ve reconnected terrible deals in the cellar, although they tell me it’s more prosaic: storm damage. You can still stay in his self-catering accommodation and take Nisbet’s ghost for a shot of his Gunsgreen Gin – smuggled across the border from a Northumberland distillery – and enter ‘Smugglers of St Abbs’, a Victorian novel about ‘Mr Jessop’ in his mansion Eyemouth. Definitely Nisbet and Gunsgreen.
North of Eyemouth the Berwickshire Coastal Path continues its stunning scenic route to New Asgard, or at least St Abbs, the old postcard fishing village that starred in a Marvel film.
A light, official-looking road sign is the link between this borderland and the world of signs, where the absence of signs also reveals.
There are additional signs in the hinterland of the border country. I find exhibits that focus on clandestine Jacobite intrigue at nearby Paxton House, another Palladian masterpiece from the Adam family.
Paxton overlooks the Union Chain Bridge – the world’s oldest suspension bridge still carrying road traffic – where another one of those Scottish welcome signs meets.
England breaks the continuity with an actual gesture this time. A dumb one, but a sign nonetheless. In border countries, you can look for patterns, for consistency, but those frissons constantly arise from the irreversible friction between these two ancient countries.
For more information, visit scotlandstartshere.com
