Festival week

The Musselburgh Festival week starts today.

The week ahead is full of events commemorating the common riding.

A common riding is an equestrian tradition mainly in the Scottish Borders in Scotland. Male and female riders ride out of the town and along its borders to commemorate the practice from 13th and 15th centuries where there were frequent raids on the Anglo-Scottish border known as the Border Reivers and also to commemorate the Scottish defeat at the Battle of Flodden. 

Today, the common ridings, rideouts, or riding of the marches continue to be annual events celebrated in the summer in the Borders of Scotland. Each town may have many rideouts over their festival week, usually having one on festival day. Some towns re-enact historic 'common ridings' – although many others have well-established 'festival rides' that are cemented within their town's history. The common riding towns are: Berwick on Tweed, Hawick, Selkirk, Langholm, Lockerbie, Jedburgh, Coldstream, Penicuik, WestLinton, Lanark, Lauder, Edinburgh, Melrose, Musselburgh, Galashiels, Duns, Sanquar, and Peebles.

This afternoon, Martin and I popped over to the St. Anne’s Care Home Summer Fete, which was lovely, despite it raining. 

In other news, Martin’s brother, Anthony, brought their dad down from Moray. Wilf is staying with us tonight before we take him home to County Durham tomorrow.

I hope you have had a good day.