Melrose and the Eildon Hills

The walk starts opposite the entrance of Melrose Abbey, the greatest of the Border abbeys whose impressive ruins lie at the heart of romantic Scott country and serve as the final resting place of the heart of Robert the Bruce. The walk continues through the marketplace of Melrose with its 16th-century mercat cross. Halfway up the climb to the saddle between Eildon Mid Hill and Eildon Hill North, you can see the remains of an old quarry with the quaint name of Bourjo (stone from which can be found in 15th-century abbey reconstructions and older grand buildings in Melrose).

As you make the final climb to the summit of Eildon Hill North, you pass the ramparts of an Iron Age hillfort — a major tribal capital belonging to the Selgovae — followed later by a Roman signal station. From the hilltops the walk returns to Melrose, first by circumnavigating the upper slopes along a good woodland path around the south and east sides, and finally returning to the north side for another grandstand view of the Tweed and Melrose before descending back the way you came.

Acknowledgment: Text derived from the Out and Out Series; Discovering the Countryside on Foot.