No Scotland, no party

 We have made it! At just before 2pm on Saturday 27th June, 2026, our intrepid band crossed the Tweed, signalling the end point of the Northumberland Coastal Path

Now, before I continue, I have a confession. At the outset of this walk and this blog (and indeed even the title). I claimed we were walking to Scotland. My claim was made in good faith and, I believe it still to be correct, as you will see. You see, the thing is that I firmly believed that the border between England and Scotland was delineated by the River Tweed. Hence, the moment we crossed it, we were entering Scotland. But as it turns out, just before Berwick the border leaves the river and lurches north condemning Berwick to being in England. One look at the map, the border following the river, as borders are wont to do, and then suddenly not following the river, makes it very clear that this was a border drawn by the English and not the Scottish. I don't know if the NorthBerwickanese consider themselves Scots living in occupied land, but, ever since I became aware of this appalling state of affairs*, I do. I am writing this from North Berwick, Scotland, that will one day be recognised as such

I mean, look at it


(*I must have known this when I was young, growing up, as I did, surrounded by maps. But at some stage the knowledge had vanished, to be replaced by the obvious deeper truth. I knew, as literally everybody does, that Berwick Rangers Football Club is a team which plays in England but is a part of the Scottish league system. The ground is south of the river, so this still works. )

Berwick is great, by the way, you can see why the English want to claim it. It's been a fantastic place to finish this walk. And finish it we have. We had a great lunch in a bar called Atelier, and in my case, a couple of delicious pints. Then we went to the library and got our certificate of completion, had a walk around, another great beer in the Curfew micropub, and a great Turkish dinner in the Mavi. (All of those places were, of course, in the Scottish North side)




Crossing the bridge to Scotland. Yeah, you heard me 





And here, from Berwick, you can see Holy Island (left) and Bamburgh Castle (right), where we were just yesterday 



100kms. 6 days. Some closing thoughts to follow. Tomorrow probably as those two glasses of celebratory raki (and the beers that preceded it) have sapped my ability to write (such as it was)

Free North Berwick! 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Start here

Image
There's an old joke, in which a car stops next to a man by the side of the road. The window is wound down "excuse me? How do we get to London?" The guy thinks for a minute and says "Well, I wouldn't start from here"  Hiking to Scotland is the kind of journey one should only undertake if you start from the right place. London, would not be a good idea. New Zealand, even worse. So we are starting from Newcastle upon Tyne. Even still we are still looking at 100km. Two and a half marathons.  So, the long and the short of all this is that we (which is to say my immediate family) have, this year, opted to walk the Northumberland Coastal Path. I'll be honest it surprised me too, but our elaborate holiday selection process ended up choosing this option. It has long been a bit of a dream of mine to do it ever since teenage holidays up here walking along bits of it. I only hope my youthful thoughts of walking along a beautiful coast from castle to castle, stopping...
Read more

Snippets from Wednesday

Image
 Or vignettes, if you prefer... Far I had carefully planned this walk, even, I confess, to the point of having a spreadsheet. A small spreadsheet, but a spreadsheet nonetheless. On that spreadsheet Wednesday's walk was listed as being 19kms. The longest day so far, but not an insurmountable challenge. On Tuesday evening, however, I was checking everything and discovered that our accommodation, which I had, for some reason, thought was in Newton-by-the-sea, was not actually there, but in a place called Beadnell. Luckily Beadnell was actually on the walk and not, say, in Wales. But it was 6kms further along, turning a manageable 19km day into a daunting 25km one. The silver lining here is that the expected 16kms today, Thursday, is now only 10. Boots I have exceptionally wide feet. They don't seem that exceptional to me, but I have become aware, over the years, that normies clearly have scrawny feet. Hiking boots, which need to fit really well, are a challenge. Last year I got a ...
Read more

Ambling to Amble

Image
Day 1 of the walk. The Northumberland Coastal Path begins from a place called Cresswell, so getting there was the first task of the day. Well, perhaps not the very first task of the day, but the first directly connected to the walking part.  There had been an anime convention in Newcastle this weekend, so we were forever bumping into groups of cosplayers wandering around. I can't tell you exactly who they were cosplaying as, because I don't know, but they all looked pretty impressive and they brought a dash of colour to the city. This morning, however, they had reverted to cosplaying as normies (though it was fairly easy to guess which of them had spent the weekend in anime-tion) Anyway, I digress. We arrived at the bus station, where bay P was where our bus left from. Bay Q was buses for Berwick. It was tempting, but... no. Instead we went on what I quickly realised was the football bus, because it passed many football landmarks. From the off we could see St James's Park, ...
Read more