The source of the river Tweed

In 1997, I started a new contract in Kendal. It was at Scottish Provident and it was the closest I'd ever worked to home. After I'd been there a while, I met a chap called Mark who was regularly required to go up to the Edinburgh office and he told me how, on one occasion, the snow on the drive home had been so heavy, he'd had to stop and stay in a hotel in Moffat.

It was the first time I ever heard of the place but I was soon to be come quite familiar with it as I started travelling up to Edinburgh and "the Moffat road" (the A701) was my route of choice. I would pass through the town, often stopping for petrol or a bite to eat.

A few miles north of Moffat, after the steep, winding climb out of the town, is a small place marked as the source of the River Tweed. I've always meant to stop there and take a look. I imagined some spring, pushing up out of the ground or through a crack in the rocks, and thought that by cupping my hands beneath it, I might, for a moment, hold the river.

Today, finally, after 17 years of using the road, I pulled over. At some point over the years, the lay-by has become a small car park with room for six cars, although I was the only one there, today. I got out and looked 'round. There was no obvious place to see the start of this mighty river but there was a sign. "In the field across the road, among pools and trickles in the wet ground, Tweed starts its journey of nearly one hundred miles to the sea. It is one of Britain's cleanest rivers: insect larvae and salmon both depend on the purity of the water."

This was a little disappointing but I got out my camera and crossed the road to see if there was something worth capturing. And this is what I managed. Towards the bottom lefthand corner of the picture is something that looks like a small stream. Perhaps that is the start of the river but it already looks too much to hold in one's hands and, frankly, I didn't much fancy crossing "the pools and trickles in the wet ground" to get to it.