Where to Stay in the Scottish Borders

If you only have a weekend, make it Melrose. It’s a pretty town below the three peaks of the Eildon Hills, and it’s the easiest to reach, about a mile and a half from the train at Tweedbank. Melrose Abbey, founded in 1136, is the red sandstone ruin where Robert the Bruce’s heart is buried. Look up and you’ll find a carved pig playing the bagpipes. Abbotsford, the house Sir Walter Scott built, is two miles west.

The town eats well, too. Provender, on the High Street, has a Michelin Bib, and Monte Cassino cooks Italian food in the old railway station. Burts Hotel, on the Market Square, has been run by the same family for more than fifty years, and The Townhouse, its sister hotel, is straight across the road. At St Boswells, the Buccleuch Arms is a country inn of 1836 with 19 rooms, and the Dryburgh Abbey Hotel stands on the bank of the Tweed beside the abbey where Scott is buried.

Jedburgh is the first Scottish town on the A68, ten miles north of the border, and it has seen a lot of history for its size. Jedburgh Abbey stands roofless in the middle of the town, a striking mix of Romanesque and early Gothic. Mary Queen of Scots’ House is the 16th-century house where she stayed for a month in 1566, and it’s now a free museum. The old jail of the 1820s, on the site of the castle, is a free museum as well.

The Royal Hotel on Canongate is a small independent hotel in a coaching inn nearly two hundred years old, and a cooked breakfast is included. Allerton House is a Georgian guest house with six rooms, five minutes’ walk from the centre. For lunch, The Caddy Mann at Mounthooly is known for its game.

Peebles is the Borders town nearest to Edinburgh, 21 miles south, and it sits on the Tweed among wooded hills. The High Street is full of independent shops, and you can walk west along the river to Neidpath Castle and the old railway viaduct. The forests of the Tweed Valley are famous for mountain biking, with Glentress the best known. Down the valley at Innerleithen is Traquair House, the oldest inhabited house in Scotland, with its own brewery and a maze.

There is plenty of choice here. Peebles Hydro is the big family hotel, with a pool and a spa, and dogs are welcome in every kind of room. The Tontine, on the High Street, dates from 1808 and has 36 rooms. Cringletie House, five minutes from town, has 15 rooms in a 28-acre estate with a walled garden of 1666. Stobo Castle is a destination spa. In Innerleithen, the Traquair Arms is a family-run hotel that welcomes dogs.

The Scullery is our own favourite in the Yarrow Valley, a hideaway with one bedroom in Ladhope Farmhouse, a Victorian house believed to have been rebuilt in 1850 by the Duke of Buccleuch. It has its own stable door, a sheltered courtyard and a pocket garden above the Ladhope Burn, where a little waterfall runs.

Inside there’s exposed stone, a rust velvet sofa in the drawing room upstairs, a cream kitchen and a king-size Victorian bedstead. Pine and oak woods, sheep and red squirrels are all around, and the skies are very dark at night. Dogs are welcome.

More about The Scullery

Galashiels is an old mill town in the narrow valley of the Gala Water, and it’s where the train from Edinburgh comes in, which makes it the best base if you don’t have a car. Buses leave from beside the station for Melrose, Selkirk, Hawick, Peebles and Jedburgh.

The reason to linger is The Great Tapestry of Scotland, in a gallery built for it: 160 stitched panels, made by more than a thousand people, that tell the whole story of the country. Old Gala House, the 16th-century home of the lairds, is a free museum with a painted ceiling of 1635. Kingsknowes Hotel is a Victorian mansion of 1869 on the Selkirk road, with twelve bedrooms and views to the Eildon Hills.

Not many people think of the Borders as having a coast, and that’s part of its charm. Eyemouth is a working fishing harbour, and Giacopazzi’s, by the water, is the place for fish and chips and ice cream. A few miles north, St Abbs is a tiny fishing village with some of the best diving in Britain. The cliffs of St Abb’s Head are crowded with seabirds in summer, and Coldingham Bay has golden sand, beach huts and a small white café on the beach.

In Eyemouth, The Ship’s Quarters is a guest house in an early 18th-century building on the harbour. You can also rent an apartment inside Gunsgreen House, the smuggler’s mansion across the water, which sleeps eleven, or its old dovecot, Nisbet’s Tower, which is for two. The museum in the house is closed for repairs at the moment.

Newcastleton is the most remote base in the Borders, 17 miles south of Hawick, almost on the English border. The Duke of Buccleuch built it in 1793 as a village for weavers, and it is still one long street with a square, Douglas Square, in the middle. People come for the quiet, for the 7stanes mountain bike trails in the forest, and for Hermitage Castle, the grim fortress of Liddesdale, which stands alone in the hills to the north. The castle is open in season only, so check before you drive out.

The Grapes Hotel is a coaching inn of about 1790 on Douglas Square, with rooms, a restaurant and three bars.