Hooptedoodle #465 - Much to See on the 253

 After some rather hectic weeks of trying to plug holes in dykes, I am pleased to be able to say that I have managed to get my mother safely relocated from a local residential care home (which our County Council has suddenly decided to close - they didn't ask my mother, by the way) to a very satisfactory nursing facility in Berwick-upon-Tweed. The move finally took place on 28th June, and it all seems to be working out rather well.

Berwick-upon-Tweed (which I shall subsequently refer to as just "Berwick") is the famous old frontier town, which at various times in the past has been in England and/or Scotland. It is about 45 minutes drive from where I live, so not an impossible journey by any means, but over the last few weeks I have made quite a few trips down there to get things sorted out. Today I had to make another visit to sign contracts and set up payment details and so, partly for a little variety and partly to take advantage of the free travel pass available for Very Old People like me, I travelled by bus.

 

My bus, in far more pleasant weather than I saw today

The bus journey takes almost exactly twice as long as driving there, but I decided to make it a day out, and took my camera along. Surely, I hear you thinking, the old fool isn't going to give us an illustrated narrative of his free day out on the bus? Well, yes - in fact that is the plan, though it may be even less promising than you fear - the weather was so awful that I didn't get to take any useful photos, so I shall use a few borrowed from elsewhere.

This now stops being a tale about me and my bus pass, or even about my mum, and becomes a little potted history of part of the A1 - the Great North Road.

The A1 is the official main route which connects Edinburgh and London, the capital cities of Scotland and England. The London Road from Edinburgh has evolved almost beyond recognition over the years, as you would expect. Back in the days of stagecoaches, roads connected villages to local market towns, some of which were large enough to offer stabling services for horses and hospitality, and the run to London consisted of an extended join-the-dots puzzle.

As time passed, many of the towns were bypassed, new expressways were built across-country to get traffic away from town centres and speed things up, and a lot of places were left high and dry. It surprises even me, but I am old enough to recall when the A1 used to include the main streets of a few villages which are well off the beaten track now.

I have always been interested in this stuff; in a village about 6 miles from where I live, there is a fine old stone bridge - single track - which was a toll bridge on the London Road into the age of the motor vehicle. It was bypassed in 1927 by the new link road which later became the A1, and that new road was itself bypassed when a brand-new, motorway-standard A1 section was opened in about 2002. This is all progress in all sorts of ways, and the little stone bridge is now just an old curiosity in a quiet backwater town.

 

I boarded the bus at East Linton, which is about half-way between Haddington and Dunbar

My trip was on the No. 253 bus, run by Borders Buses, which travels from Edinburgh to Berwick, and it goes all over the place (which is really the whole point, both for my trip and for the existence of the bus route in the first instance). The reason it takes twice as long as a trip by car is not because the buses are very slow, it is because the service supports some isolated communities in rural Eastern Scotland which otherwise might struggle to survive at all. This is an oft-forgotten aspect of public transport. I just about remember the Doctor Beeching years, when railways which did not make a profit were culled wholesale, and stations were closed in their hundreds, which was hard luck for those people who were stupid enough to live in the wrong parts of the country. Mrs Thatcher's later privatisation of local transport services complicated things further (as countless visitors to rural bits of the UK will testify).

 So today's run to Berwick included many loops off the A1, to visit (as far as I can remember) East Linton, Dunbar,  Innerwick, Thurston, Crowton, Oldhamstocks, Cockburnspath, Grantshouse, Reston, Ayton, Eyemouth and Burnmouth. I saw a few places I have never seen before, and some I haven't seen for a long while. Some of them used to be on the A1 in living memory (well, mine, anyway), some are just outliers. They are not all trivial; the river crossing at East Linton was of military importance right back to ancient times; the castle at Innerwick was one of the lairs from which the Moss Troopers tormented the English army after the Battle of Dunbar; Dunbar itself and Eyemouth were important fishing ports until comparatively recent times. 

I emphasise that these are not my pictures, just things I borrowed from the Internet to add some body to my little story.

 

The 253 well off the beaten track, in Eyemouth town centre

 

 

Ayton High Street, a very long time ago

 

 

Burnmouth Harbour

 

 

The Mercat Cross at Cockburnspath, founded by James IV

 

 

Dunbar High Street

 

 

The old bridge over the (Scottish) Tyne at East Linton, once part of the London Road, with the old Toll House on the right

 

 

What remains of Innerwick Castle

 

 

Nearly 60 years after Dr Beeching closed the last one, they have a new railway station at Reston. Here you see a typical resident waiting to get on board [this last bit is a joke, by the way]

 

 

Reston - has both a railway station and a post box...