Border Town

Visit Scotland and too often you are likely to pass by the historic border town of Berwick on Tweed. Yet the walled town is brimming with history, and though just three miles south of the border looks as much towards Scotland as it does England.
This year it is celebrating 900 years of that history and its heritage reflects that it has changed hands between the English and the Scots at least 13 times.
But it has been an English town on the north-east Northumberland coast since the 15th century and many of its population have mixed ancestry of both Scots and English.
The local dialect is akin to Geordie and in the shops even though you may pay with English pounds you might well get a Scottish fiver in your change.
It is the River Tweed which flows through the town and which ranks among the top salmon fishing waters in the world.
It has been a walled town since the 14th century when Kind Edward 1 attempted to fortify it against the Scots and there was a castle which stood on the site of the present day railway station.
The remaining town walls date from the Elizabethan period.
Its three bridges which span the Tweed are particularly striking, one from the 17th century. The Royal Border Bridge though is an impressive nineteenth century railway viaduct which was opened by Queen Victoria in 1850, it was built by Robert Stephenson, creating the rail link between London and Edinburgh.
The `Old Bridge', usually known as `Berwick Bridge' dates from 1611 and still retains a fine red sandstone structure with fourteen arches. The Royal Tweed is the most recent, not built until1925 it carried the old A1 road through the town, although the present day road now bypasses the town to the west.