by Ian Crofton
A little fro that foresaid toune
Halydon-hill that es the name
Thaire was crakked many a crowne
Of wild Scottes, and alls of tame;
Thaire was thaire banner born all doune.
Another glorious defeat . . . Fortunately for Scotland, if not for France, four years later Edward turned his attentions across the Channel.
We too needed to flee north out of England, to avoid the attentions of another herd of frisky pigs – perhaps the reincarnations of Edward’s vengeful knights. So we clambered over a drystone dike and an electric fence and dropped into Scotland. We found ourselves in a quiet pasture, looking east in the low light. Here and there the dark sea was streaked with pale blue mist. Then over a near horizon there appeared a flock of sheep, advancing purposefully. I offered a commentary to my Dictaphone: And now the sheep are charging towards us like mad bastards. What the fuck? [laughs] What did I ever do to you? These are very brave sheep. I think there’s something about when the low light comes, they change from sheep into lions.
The sheep turned out to be placid enough. The same could not be said of the heifers in the next field. They were distinctly hostile, obliging us to hop over an electric fence, a barbed-wire fence and a wall back into England. We strode on down to the burbling of a sheuch and the distant roar of the A1. An Eddie Stobart lorry sped south across the Border. A flock of starlings heading for their night-time roost began to swirl about and swarm.
The hedgerow on the side of the A1 lay-by at the Border was full of shit and litter – toilet paper, cans, plastic bags, empty food trays. Dodging the human waste we then had to dodge the traffic across the dual carriageway. On the far side there’s a stretch of Border wall, specially built for the tourists. Bob sat astride it for the camera, as no doubt thousands have before him. I dutifully snapped.
On the east side of the wall the Border continues down a hedgerow, but the way is blocked by a fierce fence and barbed-wire entanglement. It’s clear the farmer does not welcome visitors. Even if you did make your way across unscathed, you’d shortly be confronted by an even trickier obstacle: the main East Coast Line. The penalty, as I understand it, for attempting to cross a railway line is a £1,000 fine, possibly preceded by electrocution.
Fortunately we already had an alternative plan up our sleeves. We’d arranged to meet my sister Tricia and her husband Jem here, and they gave us a lift a few hundred yards down the A1 to the little road that cuts down to Marshall Meadows Farm, then across a bridge over the railway to a caravan park on the top of the cliffs overlooking the sea. There’s also, this being the English side, a marked right of way.
We drove down to Marshall Meadows Farm and parked in a large expanse of empty tarmac. A man emerged from the house.
‘This is a private road,’ he said. He had a Scottish accent.
‘Oh, is it?’ I said, playing the daft laddie. ‘Sorry. We didn’t see a sign.’
‘There’s a sign.’
‘Oh. Could we possibly park here? We’re walking the length of the Border, and we couldn’t get along it further up because of the railway.’
He stared at us as if he’d never heard such nonsense.
‘Most people who come and ask to park here I tell ’em to get lost.’
‘Oh. Oh dear.’
Then something must have softened in his steely soul. ‘Just park over at the other side there by that thing,’ he said, exasperated. ‘Just park there and on you go.’
‘Thanks very much. Cheers.’
‘Nae bother,’ he said, although I fear this concession may have cost him dearly.
The way across the bridge over the railway line is blocked by a barrier, striped in red and white, just as if it was an actual border post. It could have been Checkpoint Charlie. We didn’t need our host to lift it, though, as we could walk round the side. And so we came to an edge above the sea. Sheer cliffs of soft red sandstone dropped down onto steep slopes of grass and bracken. At their foot stretched a boulder-strewn beach.
We joined the coastal path and followed it north through a gate into Berwickshire. There was a Welcome to Scotland sign with a Saltire that lit up in the flash of Bob’s camera. Fàilte gu Alba, it said.
Having rejoined the Border, we were now faced with something of a problem. There was a steep cliff between the path and the shore. I’d brought along a rope and harness, thinking we might have to abseil. But, though the light was fast fading, it looked like there might be a steep grassy gully offering us a way down between the cliffs on either side. We investigated, cautiously stepping from tussock to tussock, from rabbit hole to rabbit hole, down the steep muddy slope. Further progress was barred by a cliff beneath our feet. But there was a ledge that led southward under a massive sandstone overhang. We made our way carefully along this, hoping there might be a route. It was becoming difficult to make out any detail as darkness fell. The ledge came to an end. Below us there was a steep nettle-covered slope. Then it seemed to stop. There must have been a drop, a cliff of maybe twenty or thirty feet blocking the way to the shore. If there’d been light and time, we might have rigged up an abseil, or walked three fields north where there was rumoured to be some kind of path down to the shore. But when we got back up to the cliff top there was only one decision to be made. The very end of the Border, now shrouded in darkness, would have to remain untrodden.
There was no swell. The sea was calm. We could just make out the white foam of low waves as they lapped the shore. To the south the lights of the castle on Holy Island stood out against the darkness. Beyond it, the lighthouse on Inner Farne gave an occasional flash. To the west, just above the horizon, was the planet Venus. Eclipsing all else, though, to the east a full moon rose above the sea through bands of grey and pink cloud into the darkening blue above.
I’d always thought that the west coast was the place for endings. After all, the west is where the sun goes down, offering the promise of a brighter, other world beyond the horizon.
But coming eastward to the North Sea – the Septentrionalis Oceanus of the ancients, the German Ocean as we used to call it, the Nordzee, the Nordsøen, la mer du Nord – turned out to be a fitting end to this Border walk.
The moon was at the full and spread before us a path of beaten gold and silver. People across different borders might be looking at the same moon, and to each person the moon would extend the same path.
So, as we gazed out towards where vision ends and imagination begins, a path of beaten gold and silver shimmered before us, shimmered across the boundless, blue-grey borderless sea.
That was a Saturday night in mid-November. By Monday the wind had turned to the northwest and the first snows were falling over the Highlands, spreading south. It was time to go home.
Where was home? It was complicated. It wasn’t a war zone, a shanty town, a refugee camp, an overcrowded room. Was it the city or the hills? Edinburgh or London? Scotland or England? Past, present or future? In waking or in dreams?
Perhaps home lay between places, dodging definition. Perhaps home is not a house, a piece of land, a sovereign territory. Perhaps we carry home with us wherever we go, like a tent and a sack on our backs; or inside us, in our minds and memories, wherever the heart is. Perhaps home is wherever you’re made welcome, wherever they look you in the eye and offer you a smile.
INDEX
A1 ref1, ref2
A7 ref1, ref2, ref3
A68 ref1, ref2, ref3
Abbey Ceremony, the ref1, ref2
access see Access Land, right to roam, trespass
Access Land ref1
Ad Fines ref1
Agricola, Julius ref1
Ainslie, Robert ref1
air crashes ref1
Alexander III ref1
Alnwick ref1
Alps, borders in ref1
Alwinton ref1
Anger My Heart ref1
Anglo-Saxon ref1, ref2, ref3
Annan ref1, ref2, ref3
Anne, Queen ref1
/> Anthony’s Chip Shop, Coldstream ref1
Antonine Wall ref1
Argyle, Earl of ref1
Armstrong, Dr John ref1
Armstrong, Sandy ‘Ill Will’ ref1
Armstrong of Kinmont, William ref1
Arran, Earl of ref1
Arthuret House ref1
asylum-seekers ref1, ref2
Auchope Cairn ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6
Ayala, Pedro de ref1
Ba Green ref1
Bailies’ Burn ref1
balkanisation ref1
Balliol, Edward ref1
Balliol, John ref1, ref2
Bannockburn, Battle of ref1, ref2
Barron, H.F. ref1
Beck Burn ref1
Beefstand Hill ref1
Bell, Tabitha ref1
Bell’s Burn ref1
Ben Nevis ref1
Berlin Wall ref1, ref2
Bertie, Thirteenth Baron Willoughby de Eresby, Peregrine ref1
Berwick-upon-Tweed ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9
Besom, The, Coldstream ref1, ref2
Bewcastle ref1
Billingsgate Market ref1
Birgham, Treaty of ref1
Birrel, Robert ref1
‘Black Adam of Cheviot’ ref1
Blackadder Water ref1
Black Hag ref1
Blackhall Hill ref1
Black Needle ref1, ref2
Black Sark ref1, ref2
Blair, Tony ref1
Bloody Bush ref1, ref2, ref3
Bloody Bush Road ref1, ref2
Blue Saltire ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
Bogg, Edmund ref1
Bold Buccleuch see Scott of Buccleuch, Walter
Bolebec, Hugh de ref1, ref2
border / boundary stones ref1, ref2
Border Counties Railway ref1
Border Hotel, Kirk Yetholm ref1, ref2
Bothwell, Earl of ref1
Bound Road, the ref1
Bowen, Emanuel ref1
Bower, Walter ref1
Bowles, William Lisle ref1
Bowmont Hill ref1
Bowmont Water ref1
Bowness-on-Solway ref1
Bradley, A.G. ref1
Branxton Hill ref1, ref2, ref3
Branxton Stead ref1
Braydon Crag ref1
Bremenium ref1, ref2
Bridge Inn, Penton ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6
Brigadoon ref1
Broad Flow ref1
Brooks, Richard ref1
Brown, Captain Samuel ref1
Brownridge Bank ref1
Brythonic see Welsh / Brythonic
Buccleuch, Walter Scott of see Scott of Buccleuch, Walter
Burgh by Sands ref1
Burghley, Lord ref1
Burns, Robert ref1, ref2
Burnt Humbleton ref1
Butt Roads ref1
Buttroads Sike ref1
buzzards ref1, ref2
Byrness ref1
Callerheugh Bank ref1
Camden, William ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
Canonbie ref1
Carham, Battle of ref1
Carham Burn ref1
Carleton, Thomas ref1
Carter Bar ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7
Carter Fell ref1, ref2, ref3
Carlisle ref1, ref2
Carlyle, Thomas ref1
Carmichael, Sir John ref1
Castle Gunmakers, Norham ref1
Castle Hill ref1
Cat Cairn ref1
Catcleuch Hill ref1
Cauld, the ref1
Cecil, Lord ref1
Chapelcross nuclear power station ref1
Checkpoint Charlie ref1
Cheviot, the ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8
Cheviot Hills ref1, ref2, ref3
‘Chevy Chase, The Ballad of’ ref1
Chew Green ref1, ref2
Clark’s Sike ref1, ref2
Charles II ref1
Clappers ref1
Clennell Street ref1, ref2
coble, Tweed ref1, ref2
Cocklawfoot ref1
Coldmouth Hill ref1
Coldstream ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
Coldstream Abbey ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
Coldstream Bridge ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6
Coldstreamer, the ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6
Coldstream Guards ref1, ref2
Coldstream Pipe Band ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
College Burn ref1
Common Travel Area ref1
Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur ref1
Conundrum ref1, ref2
Coquet, River ref1
Coquetdale ref1
Coquet Head ref1
Corbie Craig ref1
cordite ref1
Cornhill Castle ref1
Cornhill on Tweed ref1, ref2
Corries Mill ref1, ref2
Countrup Sike ref1
Coventry Cathedral ref1
Crawford, Earl of ref1
Crawford, Walter ref1
Crockett, S.R. ref1
Cross of St George ref1, ref2
Cuthbert, St see St Cuthbert
Dagg, John ref1
Dalston Fair ref1
David II ref1, ref2
Davidson’s Burn ref1
Davidson’s Monument ref1
Dayholm of Kershope ref1
Deadwater ref1, ref2
Deadwater Farm ref1
Deadwater Fell ref1, ref2
Deadwater Rigg ref1, ref2, ref3
Debatable Lands ref1, ref2, ref3
Defoe, Daniel ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Dere Street ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Derry / Londonderry, border near ref1, ref2
‘Disputed Ground’ ref1
DMZ, Korean ref1, ref2
Douglas, Sir Archibald ref1
Douglas, Earls of ref1, ref2
Douglas, Hugh, Earl of Ormonde ref1
Douglas, James, 2nd Earl of ref1
D’Oysel, Monsieur ref1
Dover ref1
Drayton, Michael ref1
Dreeper Island ref1
Drumelzier ref1
Dunbar, Battle of ref1
Dunbar, Patrick, Earl of ref1
Duncan, James ref1
Dunlop, Bessie ref1
Duntae Edge ref1
Durham ref1, ref2
East Coast Line ref1, ref2
Eastriggs ref1, ref2, ref3
Eden, River ref1, ref2, ref3
Edinburgh ref1, ref2
Edward I ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
Edward III ref1, ref2
Eildon Hills ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Elfhame ref1, ref2, ref3
Elizabeth I ref1, ref2, ref3
Elliot, Jean ref1
English Civil War ref1
English Defence League ref1, ref2
English Kershope ref1, ref2
Englishtown ref1
Errol, Earl of ref1
Esk, River ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Eskdalemuir ref1
Ettrick Forest ref1
European Union ref1, ref2, ref3
Eyemouth ref1
Fairwood Fell ref1
Fallodon, Viscount Grey of ref1
Famous Blacksmith’s Shop, Gretna Green ref1, ref2
Farne Islands ref1
Fenwick ref1
First World War ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
Fish Garth, the ref1
Fletcher, Wight ref1
Flodden, Battle of ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8
Flodden Ride-Out ref1, ref2
‘Flowers of the Forest, The’ ref1, ref2
Fool Sike ref1
Forestry Commission ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Forman’s Butchers, Norham ref1
Forster, Sir John ref1, ref2, ref3
Fortress Europe ref1
Fort William ref1
&nbs
p; Foulmire Heights ref1
Foulstep ref1
foxes ref1
Froissart, Jean ref1
G4S ref1
Gaelic ref1, ref2
Gallipoli ref1
Gamel’s Path see Gemelspeth
GCHQ ref1
Gemelspeth ref1, ref2, ref3
George I ref1
Glinger Burn ref1
Godard, Jean-Luc ref1
goosanders ref1, ref2, ref3
Graham, Sir James ref1
Graham, Jane ref1
Graham family ref1, ref2
Great haugh ref1
Great Wall of China ref1
Greece–Turkey border ref1
Green, Robson ref1
Greena Hill ref1
Green Hill ref1
Green Needle ref1
Gretna and Gretna Green ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
Gretna Inn ref1
Gretna munitions factory ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Grey, Sir Edward see Fallodon, Viscount Grey of
Greyhound Law ref1
Grey Lads, the ref1
Grindstone Law ref1
Hadrian’s Wall ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
Hadrian’s Wall Walk ref1
Haggie Knowe ref1
Haithwaite ref1
Halidon Hill, Battle of ref1
Hamilton, Lord Ernest ref1
handba ref1
Hanging Stone, the ref1
Hangman’s Land ref1
Harden, Auld Wat of ref1
Hare Cleugh, Inner and Outer ref1
Hatteraick, Dirk ref1
Havering Bog ref1
Hazelridge ref1
Hay, Gilbert ref1
Haydon Bridge ref1
Heart’s Toe, the ref1
Heathrow ref1
Hen Hole ref1
Henry III ref1
Henry VIII ref1, ref2
Hermitage Castle ref1
Heron of Ford, Sir George ref1
Heron of Ford, John ref1
Heron, Sir William ref1
Hexham ref1, ref2
Hexpethgate ref1
HM Factory Gretna see Gretna munitions factory
Hobbs’ Flow ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Hogg, James and Nicholas ref1
Holy Island (Lindisfarne) ref1
Holyrood ref1
Home, Alexander, Second Lord ref1, ref2