Beautiful Borders Tour

*Updated times and prices for SUMMER 2018 - this tour now includes a visit to the mystical Rosslyn Chapel*

I was invited by Rabbie's Tours and Scotrail to try their newest tour taking in some of the pretty towns in the Scottish Borders region just South of Edinburgh.

I love this idea, most of these places you can only usually get to by car. This route takes advantage of the newly opened Borders Railway so you can just sit back and relax without having to deal wth parking or driving, particularly handy as our last stop was a craft brewery "Born in the Borders". We took the train from Edinburgh to Galashiels and were met by our tour guide and driver in a modern, clean Mercedes minibus. 

During the day we took in Scott’s View and the original Wallace Monument. We stopped at the cute little market town of Kelso. The locals call it Kel-sey.  Just in time we found a cafe for lunch as there was a surprise April snow shower! Here is the town hall, it looks like a toy, so perfectly symmetrical.
 

I found a whole field of wild garlic.

So had to pick a bag full of the leaves to make into garlic pesto. Then had to spend the rest of the tour apologising to the driver and other passengers for the smell. Oops!

Jedburgh Abbey

The ruins are quite spectacular

Smailholm tower

We made an unscheduled stop here to take in the views and I actually squeaked when I realised it was the same tower as on this book of poetry I had brought along. 

Born in the Borders

The buildings of this craft brewery are so pretty. We found out what makes their beer special and picked up some local food goodies from the shop

Borders countryside

Always something pretty outside the window on this trip

While I received free tickets to try out this tour from Rabbie's Tours and Scotrail, all opinions are my own.

The details:

Tour Departs daily: 09.45 - Rabbie's Café Bar, Waterloo Place, Edinburgh, EH1 3EG. Returns: 16.30 approx
 

Price: £29-£44
Departing: daily

You can book here.

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