Day 3: Berwick-upon-Tweed

It was a beautiful sunny day this morning when we woke up in Hawick. I'd decided it might be nice to do something in Scotland today rather than travelling to Northumberland again and when I was researching options last night, I found a National Trust place called St Abb's Head. It looked like it would have some beautiful coastal walks, and it was only about 50 miles away from Hawick, so we decided to give it a go.

We had a lovely drive through the countryside towards the coast, with blue sky everywhere. It was only when we got within a couple of miles of St Abb's Head that we saw what looked like a large black cloud on the horizon. As we got closer, we found that the entire coastline was swathed in mist. And when we got to the National Trust car park at St Abb's Head, we found that it was both tiny and absolutely full. Oh dear!

We didn't have a back-up plan for the day, so we weren't quite sure what to do. In the end we drove a few miles down the road to the nearby town of Eyemouth, where we eventually managed to park by the harbour. When we got out of the car I was slightly confused about why there was a crowd of people looking down into the water. It turned out there was a man feeding seals  

From the harbour we followed signs for a coastal path. It was quite windy and I was wearing my coat, but other people were getting ready for a day at the beach  

As you can see from the photos, it was quite misty here too.

The coastal path led us along the top of a small cliff.

From here we could see back towards the town. Or, at least, we would have been able to if it wasn't so misty!

From the top of the cliff we could just get a tantalising glimpse of what the scenery at St Abb's Head would have been like on a different day.

What we could see looked really beautiful  

The clifftop was supposed to be home to a fortress. 

It was another one of those fortresses where there isn't really much left to see. There were a few canon dotted around though.

There wasn't a lot else to see in Eyemouth, so headed back to the car.

Looking at the map, we realised that we weren't very far from Berwick-upon-Tweed, so we decided to give up on the idea of spending the day in Scotland and head back to England instead. Admittedly, Berwick is England's most northerly town. According to Wikipedia, it's located further north than Copenhagen  

We made it to Berwick without any difficulties and managed to park on the second attempt. The first attempt failed as, although we found a car park where parking was free, it required getting a special parking disk from the visitor centre. Luckily we then found a long stay car park, which was also free and didn't require a disk.

The long stay car park was actually in a great location, because we were able to climb up straight from there onto Berwick's ramparts.

There was a really nice path which led along the ramparts for quite a long way.

On a clearer day I think there would have been some really good views of the sea. As it was, we could just make out a misty kind of blue in the distance  

I didn't know what to expect of Berwick, but it seemed like a really pretty little town.

We continued past various fortifications...

...and came to a place where we had a view out over the river estuary.

It was still quite misty in some directions...

...but as we turned a corner we could see that things were starting to look a bit brighter inland.

At this point we got our first glimpse of a series of bridges across the river Tweed.

First of all there was an old bridge, which looked a bit worse for wear.

Beyond that was a more modern road bridge, which looked rather ugly.

And beyond that was a very impressive-looking railway bridge.

Once we got past the road bridge, we had a better view of the viaduct.

There was a nice path along the river here, so we were able to stroll along, getting closer to it.

At one point we were even lucky enough to see a train go across it  

The weather had definitely improved now and it was really sunny, though still a bit windy.

We got closer to the viaduct and eventually walked underneath it.

From the opposite side we could look up towards Berwick Castle.

The path continued along the river, out of the town and into the countryside.

It obviously wasn't a circular walk though, so we figured this was the point at which we'd better turn back.

We had some clearer views on the way back, passing a lighthouse which definitely hadn't been visible earlier.

The view of the sea from the ramparts was now a lot clearer as well  

Berwick was a really nice place to visit and we had a good time, even if it wasn't quite what I had originally planned