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Melrose

Tucked in between the Tweed and the gorse-backed Eildon Hills, thirty miles south of Edinburgh, minuscule MELROSE is the most beguiling of towns, its narrow streets trimmed by a harmonious ensemble of styles, from pretty little cottages and tweedy shops to high-standing Georgian and Victorian facades. Most of the year it's a sleepy little place, but as the birthplace in 1883 of the Rugby Sevens (seven-a-side games), it swarms during Sevens Week (second week in April), and again in early September when it hosts the Melrose Music Festival, a popular weekend of traditional music attracting folkies from afar.

To the north of the town square, the pink- and red-tinted stone ruins of Melrose Abbey (April-Sept daily 9.30am-6.30pm; Oct-March Mon-Sat 9.30am-4.30pm, Sun 2-4.30pm; HS; £3.50) soar above their riverside surroundings. Founded in 1136, Melrose was the first Cistercian settlement in Scotland and grew rich selling wool and hides to Flanders, but its prosperity was fragile: the English repeatedly razed Melrose, most viciously under Richard II in 1385 and the Earl of Hertford in 1545. Most of the present remains date from the intervening period, when extensive rebuilding abandoned the original Cistercian austerity for an elaborate Gothic style inspired by the abbeys of northern England, though it seems likely that the abbey was never fully finished before the Reformation. The sculptural detailing at Melrose is of the highest quality, but it's easy to miss if you don't know where to look, so taking advantage of the free audioguide, or buying yourself a guidebook, is a good idea.

The site is dominated by the Abbey Church, which has lost its west front, and whose nave is reduced to the elegant window arches and chapels of the south aisle. Amazingly, however, the stone pulpitum (screen), separating the choir monks from their lay brothers, is preserved. Beyond, the presbytery has its magnificent perpendicular window, lierne vaulting and ceiling bosses intact, with the capitals of the surrounding columns sporting the most intricate of curly kale carving. In the south transept, another fine fifteenth-century window sprouts yet more delicate, foliate tracery and the adjacent cornice is enlivened by angels playing musical instruments, though these figures are badly weathered. This kind of finely carved detail is repeated everywhere you look in Melrose: look for the statue of the Virgin and Child, high on the south side of the westernmost surviving buttress, the Coronation of the Virgin on the east end gable, and the numerous mischievous gargoyles, from peculiar crouching beasts to the pig playing the bagpipes on the roof on the south side of the nave.

Legend has it that the heart of Robert the Bruce is buried here (his body having been buried at Dunfermline Abbey), and this theory received an unexpected boost in 1997, when a heart cask was publicly exhumed. However, the burial location was not in accordance with Bruce's own wishes. In 1329, the dying king told his friend, Sir James Douglas, to carry his heart on a Crusade to the Holy Land in fulfilment of an old vow: "Seeing therefore, that my body cannot go to achieve what my heart desires, I will send my heart instead of my body, to accomplish my vow." Douglas tried his best, but was killed fighting the Moors in Spain - and Bruce's heart ended up in Melrose. A new commemorative stone marks its current resting-place in the chapter house, to the north of the sacristy.

The paltry ruins of the old monastic buildings edge the church to the north and lead over the road to the Commendator's House (same hours as the abbey), a lovely red sandstone building now housing a modest collection of ecclesiastical bric-a-brac. Back towards the town, to the south of the abbey, you should pop into the delightful Priorwood Garden (April-Sept Mon-Sat 10am-5.30pm, Sun 1.30-5.30pm; Oct-Dec Mon-Sat 10am-4pm, Sun 1.30-4pm; NTS; free), whose compact walled precincts are given over to an orchard and flowers that are suitable for drying. Melrose's other museum, the Trimontium Exhibition, just off Market Square (April-Oct Mon-Fri 10.30am-4.30pm, Sat & Sun 10.30am-1pm & 2-4.30pm; www.trimontium.freeserve.co.uk; £1.50), is a quirky little centre outlining the three Roman occupations of the region, that merits a browse.