Northern Borderlands Heritage Tours

Tour starts from Edinburgh where you take a train on the Borders Railway to Tweedbank. You will be met by your tour guide and driven in a Freelander Land Rover through the Scottish Borders and Northern Borderlands of England visiting places of interest

• The tour starts at Tweedbank, near Melrose in the Scottish Borders. You will be met by the tour guide at the Borders Rail terminus at Tweedbank around 9am and driven to Abbotsford, the ancestral home of Sir Walter Scott,

• From Abbotsford you will be driven through the picturesque Border countryside towards Hermitage Castle, famous for its association with Mary, Queen of Scots.

• On the banks of the Liddle water you will have a Picnic lunch and soak in the atmosphere of this rural area which was once the heartland of the Border Reivers.

• After lunch you will be driven over the moorlands and mosses of the Northern Borderlands crossing over the border into England and visiting an Anglo /Saxon Cross dating back to the early 8th Century at Bewcastle Church.

• We then drive a short distance along the Maiden Way to visit the Roman Wall at Birdoswald Fort where you will visit an interesting museum depicting life during Roman times.

• From here we will drive to Lanercost Priory, a 12th Century Augustinian Monastery The Priory is still used for Anglican worship and is also a venue for Summer Musical Festivals. .


• We then head back towards the Anglo /Scottish border and enter an area once known as ‘The Debatable Land’ aptly named because these lands belonged neither to the English or Scottish Crowns so there was no rule of law.

• Within ‘The Debatable Land’ you will visit Gilnockie Tower, a fine example of a Scottish Pele Tower once the stronghold of Johnnie Armstrong, the infamous Border Reiver, but now The Armstrong Heritage Museum.

• Our last leg of the tour will take you north through the Ewes and Teviot valleys arriving back at Tweedbank Borders Rail terminus in the evening.