Great Scott!

Today our only visit was to Abbotsford, former home of the great Scots novelist, Sir Walter Scott. The house is very close to Melrose and as Scott was a was a pioneer of the Scottish Baronial style of architecture, Abbotsford is festooned with turrets and stepped gables. The house was completed in several different styles and periods and so looks a bit of a hotchpotch, but is lovely nevertheless. We had a wonderful house guide who showed us the huge range of artifacts collected by or given to Scott in his lifetime. Some of the exhibits in the entrance hall can be seen in today's Blip. Scott was said to have invented the historical novel and his poetry and fiction made him very wealthy, but his work is rarely read today. After the house visit we walked down the terraces to stand beside the River Tweed, that great salmon river, and back through the formal gardens. I would recommend anyone to visit if travelling in the Borders - the whole experience is sensational. 

The party had a free afternoon in Melrose so I lazed the time away sitting in the sun - apart from when it rained, of course, when I popped into the lovely little Roman museum in the market place - above the town was the Roman fort of Trimontium, occupied from 80 to 211. There are loads of artifacts which were found up there, though most of them are in the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.