Last week we took a trip down south again, but just going a wee bit over the border this time, intending to visit Flodden battle field. But we stopped off in the small border town of Kelso to stretch our legs and have a look at the town and its surroundings.

Kelso is a nice wee place and as it’s not really close to a big town it is well served with shops and feels quite affluent compared with most towns nowadays.

In fact Kelso benefits from having Floors Castle on its doorstep, it’s the home of the Duke of Roxburghe, actually I think he owns a lot around and about that area. I knew someone who lived in Kelso for a short time recently and hated it because she said it was still stuck in a feudal system with the duke’s influence being everywhere. I don’t know that I would like that myself as I’m not into forelock tugging and sucking up to the so called nobility. The photo below is of Floors Castle as seen from Kelso Bridge.

The river is the Tweed of course.
The photo below was taken from the other side of the bridge.

And this is the ruins of Kelso Abbey which are by the river.

As you can see the town itself has some very grand old buildings. I have it on good authority that the posher hotels here are very good hunting grounds if you’re a young thing and you fancy bagging yourself a wealthy husband, I suspect that they might be more bother than they are worth though!

During World War 2 Kelso was ‘taken by storm’ by the very friendly Polish Army. Prior to that the women of the town had only ever been courted by rough, rural Scottish lads apparently, and the courtly manners of the Poles just bowled the local women over! I used to have a very dear old gardening friend who was born and brought up in Kelso and she had the best time of her life in those days when everyone lived life to the max because you never knew when a bomb might drop on you – or your gentlemen friend would be given orders to leave the town and prepare for battle.

So that was Kelso and from there we drove to Flodden where the fighting was a lot longer ago, almost 500 years in fact. More about that soon.