Scottish Borders

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Sandwiched between the Cheviot Hills on the English border and the Pentland and Moorfoot ranges to the south of Edinburgh, are the Borders (wwww.scot-borders.co.uk), a region made up from the old shire counties of Berwick, Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles. If you've travelled from the south across the bleak moorland of neighbouring Northumberland, you'll be struck by the green lushness of the Tweed valley, the pivotal feature of the region's geography. Yet the Borders also incorporates some of the wildest stretches of the Southern Uplands, with bare, rounded peaks and heathery hills punctuated by valleys.
The Borders' most famous sights are its ruined abbeys, founded during the reign of King David I (1124-53), whose policy of encouraging the monastic orders had little to do with spirituality. The bishops and monks David established at Kelso, Melrose, Jedburgh and Dryburgh were the frontiersmen of his kingdom, helping to advance his authority in areas of doubtful allegiance. This began a long period of relative stability across the Borders which enabled its abbeys to flourish until the Wars of Independence with England, which erupted in 1296. From the first half of the sixteenth century until the Act of Union, the Borders again experienced turbulent times, fought over by the English and the Scots, and plagued by endless clan warfare and Reivers' raids. Consequently, the countryside is strewn with ruined castles and keeps, while each major town celebrates its agitated past in the Common Ridings, when locals - especially the "callants", the young men - dress up in period costume and ride out to check the burgh boundaries. It's a boisterous macho business, performed with pride and matched only by the local love of rugby union, which reaches a crescendo with the Melrose Sevens tournament in April.
The Tweed valley is the Borders at its best, with the finest section between Melrose and Peebles, where you'll find a string of attractions, from the eccentricities of Sir Walter Scott's mansion at Abbotsford to the intriguing Jacobite past of Traquair House, along with the aforementioned ruined abbeys. The valley widens to the east to form the Merse basin, an area of rich arable land that boasts a series of grand stately homes, principally Floors Castle, Manderston, Paxton and Mellerstain House, all featuring the Neoclassical work of the Adam family - William, and two of his four sons, John and Robert.
To the west, the Borders have a much wilder aspect, where a series of narrow valleys lead up to the border with Dumfriesshire: Liddesdale, southwest of Jedburgh, Ettrick Water, which takes you over into Eskdale, and Yarrow Water which connects Selkirk with Moffat in Dumfries. Choose any of these three routes for the scenery. North of the Tweed, the Lammermuir Hills, a narrow band of foothills, forms the southern edge of Lothian and the central belt. Further east, the coastline becomes more rugged, its cliffs and rocky outcrops harbouring a series of desolate ruined castles, while inland, the flatness of the terrain is interrupted by the occasional extinct volcano.
The only train line in the Borders runs along the east coast, and travelling around the region by bus takes some planning: pick up timetables from any tourist office and plot your connections closely: it's often difficult to cross between valleys.