Places to Go: Innerleithen
Whilst the majority of these articles feature travel by rail, the same principles of minimising carbon emissions apply to trips by bus. I have had three trips to the Scottish Borders in the last year starting from Jedburgh which is reached by really useful service X74 Peter Hogg service from Eldon Square Bus Station in Newcastle. Within England, that is until Carter Bar and the Scottish Border, the Day Saver is valid. Also the £2.50 fare cap which applies in Durham, Tyne and Wear and Northumberland does not cover all the way to Jedburgh so rebook if necessary at the border. The through fare is £6.50. The Peter Hogg drivers must drive one of the fastest routes in the UK, covering 56.5miles in 97 minutes, which is an astonishing average speed of 35.25 miles per hour. There are three rotations a day on the X74 and the last bus south from Jedburgh is at 1513 (not Sundays) which doesn’t really permit a full day out. The alternative is to use the Borders Buses X95 via Carlisle then bus or train across the Tyne Valley.
Borders Buses is related to West Coast Motors on the other side of Scotland, same red and cream livery, and they have an easy to use app which sells a range of mobile tickets. Best value is the 24 hour ticket at £10.70 covering the Scottish Borders, Berwick, Lothian, Edinburgh and Carlisle, and since my travels with Border Buses commenced with the 1049 service 68 from Jedburgh to Galashiels I was able to finish off my travels with an early Sunday trip to Carlisle.
Innerleithen is a small Borders town, close to Peebles which is the next town west. I elected to stay overnight at the diminutive St Ronan’s Hotel where the room was a family one with bunk beds. Apart from sleeping, I was barely in the room at all, dividing my time between the National Trust for Scotland’s Printing Works, Traquair House and an evening bus trip up to Penicuik for a meal.
Robert Smail’s was a printing works which never modernised and when its founder died the NTS bought it in a time warp. Smail’s kept a copy of everything they ever printed, as shown in the photo, which had become a social history of the area. For a while they published a weekly newspaper, printing the train times set in letter type as an advertisement on the front page. It is best visited on a Monday when there are tours of the whole site. I was permitted to visit the office. Traquair, a mile south, is the oldest inhabited house in Scotland, visited by 27 Kings and Queens (not sure if Charles III has been yet) with impressive gardens and a maze laid out in 1980 in which to get quite disorientated and/or lost. There was a medieval event over the weekend of my visit, and many young people attending went home to Edinburgh on the same X62 which took me to Penicuik. I had booked a table at Koshi, an excellent Nepali and Indian restaurant, and was pleased to be welcomed by name when I put a foot through the door.
I slipped out of the hotel early for the 0733 to Galashiels, connecting to the X95 to Hawick for breakfast in Morrisons, and then picked up the first of three through services to Carlisle via Langholm. At Carlisle I transferred to the train to Newcastle, but could have taken the cheaper and slower bus 685 into Eldon Square, after a short immersive trip into the centre of the Borders.
