Flodden, Kelso and Melrose

A couple of days before we left for Scotland, I was doing a last check of the areas we were going to, to make notes on the things we wanted to see, or find new things. I had remembered a battlefield in the Borders area, that I thought might be interesting to see. It was over the border, into England, so it would have been cool to say we were in England, but there wasn't much to see at the battlefield, and it was a bit out of the way. I looked it up nonetheless.

It was the battle of Flodden. The name didn't ring a bell for me, but I read a little bit about it. It was a horrible defeat of the Scots by the English. Over ten thousand Scottish soldiers killed (and half that number or less of English), including much nobility, and the King himself. Gone with the king were the last hopes of Scottish sovereignty, so it was one of the most important events in Scottish history.

Now it turns out they were having an anniversary. There was much being made of how little was being made of the battle. There was no big commemoration, not even a visitors' center. Until very recently, there's nothing on the site but a stone cross and bronze plaque. This year, they put up a few interpretive signs, discussing the battle. Anyway, I wondered when the battle had taken place. September 8th... *looks at calendar* ...that's the day we're going to be in that area! What year? 15... 1513? We would be there on the five hundredth anniversary of the battle - to the day! By sheer coincidence. So, yes, we would go there.

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( more Flodden, plus abbeys )

Scott's View

I forgot to include this in the previous post. We found Scott's View after Kelso. As for most of the trip, the photo conditions were not good. Grey sky is tough for shooting.



It's called Scott's View, since it was one of Sir Walter Scott's favorite vistas. He would often stop there - so often that it is said that when his funeral procession passed that way, his horses stopped out of habit.