Once the stomping ground of brutal Border reivers, up-and-coming Kelso is now luring entrepreneurial folk from both sides of the divide
“We only came to Kelso for a wedding,” smiles Claire Fletcher in Seasons, the bijou coffee and rare vinyl shop she runs with her husband Steve. “We were instantly smitten and just had to move from London. We had such a poor quality of life; now our family is blossoming. We’ve been welcomed with open arms.” The Fletchers are the living embodiment of a booming Borders market town – one which Sir Walter Scott once hailed the “most romantic village in Scotland” – that straddles all kinds of divides.
Things weren’t always so rosy for the settlement here on the confluence of the mighty Tweed and Teviot rivers. Little more than a cannon’s shot from the border, the original town of Roxburghe was on the frontline in the Wars of Independence, changing hands numerous times. The final nail in its coffin came in 1482 when its port of Berwick-upon-Tweed was snatched by England.
Few towns on either side of the border boast as rich a history, one you can tantalisingly taste today. Local luminary Colin Henderson could scarcely be prouder of Kelso: “We’ve got it all here, from Scottish and English kings and queens, through to Bonnie Prince Charlie leaving a horseshoe imprint on our streets.”
He could have also mentioned the ruins of the finest of the quartet of Borders abbeys, the rich Sir Walter Scott trail you can follow, and what I’m told locally was the world’s first international flight – in 1785 balloonist Vincenzo Lunardi soared off across the border from Kelso.