June 8, 2022
We were the only guests at Fauhope last night, so we had the beautiful breakfast room all to ourselves. There was lovely music playing in the background while we ate; Rosemary had eggs Benedict and Paul had scrambled eggs with smoked salmon.
But it was pouring with rain and we couldn’t even see the tops of the Eildon Hills, which are right next to Melrose. So we didn’t really want to go out. We had planned to visit Abbotsford, Sir Walter Scott’s house, but Sheila was rather cool towards that idea. Instead she strongly suggested we should consider the Great Tapestry of Scotland, which is in Galashiels. We had seen signs for it but we didn’t know what it was.
After breakfast, though, we were sitting in the conservatory watching the rain bucketing down when Sheila’s Lithuanian helper came and told us she was going to Galashiels, if we wanted a ride. This spurred us into action.
The Great Tapestry was housed in a two-story stone and glass building in the town centre of Galashiels, which we hadn’t noticed yesterday. It was the brainchild of the Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith and was only a few years old. It consists of 160 panels which depict the history of Scotland, starting from the rocks which came together to form the land and continuing to almost the present day. Each panel has a description of the event that is shown, and it credits all of the embroiderers who worked on the panel. The design shows great attention to detail: for example all of the gulls depicted have yellow eyes because they are Herring Gulls.
The panels were separated into seven groups; after three of them we took a break and went downstairs to the “Stitchers” café for lunch, tea and a scone. Each of the café tables had a particular type of stitch drawn on to identify it. Likewise each of the (ungendered) toilet cubicles had a type of stitch drawn on the wall.
Then we carried on with the rest of the panels. Everything about Scotland was there: Dolly the Sheep, Scotland’s failure to win world football in Argentina, Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism, you name it. By the time we looked at all of the panels and read all of the descriptive material our day was used up. We finally finished up at the museum just before 3 pm.
We headed over to the transit centre and caught the 3 pm bus back to Melrose. No time for Abbotsford but that was fine. As we arrived in Melrose the rain lightened up, which made it easier to look around. We briefly thought about going into the Roman museum but it was set to close at 4:30, so we wouldn’t have much time. Instead we checked out various places to eat, finally ending up at Marmion’s, where we had eaten yesterday. As neither of us were particularly hungry we decided on a Turkish sharing platter. It turned out to be just the right amount of food.
By the time we finished the rain had stopped, so walking back to Gattonside was quite nice. We headed up to our room for a while and then went back down to sit in the conservatory. Our host Ian made us a pot of tea and brought some sweets for us.
Next: Melrose to Harestanes
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