Discover The Scottish Borders: Coast and Culture

The Scottish Borders combine gentle hills, open landscapes and a picturesque coast. This variety opens up many travel ideas: coastal cliffs and seabirds, riverside paths, forests, historic sites, crafts and regional whisky culture are available as different focal points for your planning. When choosing a holiday apartment in The Scottish Borders, you can therefore consider whether nature, activity, history or enjoyment should determine the rhythm of your stay.

Character between coast, hills and forest

St Abb’s Head is a coastal headland with dramatic cliffs and colonies of seabirds. The St Abb’s Head Nature Centre provides information about the area’s wildlife, geology and history. At Mire Loch, you can observe swans, ducks, damselflies and butterflies. Inland, the ponds at Glentress offer a different natural setting: they are surrounded by ash, birch and pine trees and provide a habitat for herons, bats and red squirrels.

Trails for walking, cycling and rivers

Various landscapes and types of trail are available for active days. A new section of the River Tweed Trail was completed and opened in the Scottish Borders for pedestrians, wheelchair users and cyclists. This section provides a traffic-free connection from the centre of Peebles to the Glentress mountain bike centre. There, the Glentress Multi-user Trail connects Glentress Gateway with the café, bike shop, practice area, introductory trails and starting points for all walking and mountain biking routes. At Glentress, a route through the forest also provides an introduction to mountain biking; practice areas marked according to difficulty and a small mountain bike zone for the youngest visitors complement the facilities.

The Scottish Borders has many signposted long-distance cycling routes as well as shorter routes accessible from the towns. Detailed, printable maps are available for the Scottish Borders Core Paths to help with orientation on local trails. The Tweed Valley Canoe Trail runs for 30 miles along the River Tweed from Stobo to Tweedbank. Those considering a longer walk will find St Cuthbert’s Way, a trail that begins in Melrose and ends in Lindisfarne (Holy Island), running approximately eastwards through several historic settlements and across the border into England. The Berwickshire Coastal Path is approximately 48 km long and runs from Cockburnspath to Berwick-upon-Tweed; dramatic cliff scenery, arches, sea stacks and crumbling castles define it.

History, crafts and motor racing

Culture can be experienced in many different ways in the Scottish Borders. The Great Tapestry of Scotland consists of 160 panels and tells the story of Scotland’s history, heritage and culture in visual form. The Borders Abbeys Way connects the four major ruined abbeys in Kelso, Jedburgh, Melrose and Dryburgh. At the Jim Clark Motorsport Museum, an interactive exhibition showcases the life and racing career of Jim Clark; four of his most significant racing cars are currently displayed there.

The Borders Textile Towerhouse presents the history of Border knitwear and tweed in a restored 16th-century tower house. Changing exhibitions focus on contemporary fashion, design, art and crafts, while the house hosts various arts and crafts workshops throughout the year. A route through Glentress Forest leads to the fortified settlements near Janet’s Brae and provides insights into the Iron Age and the lives of ancestors more than 2,000 years ago. Common Ridings and events add to the region’s cultural character.

Whisky with a regional connection

The Borders Distillery is considered the first Scotch whisky distillery in the Scottish Borders since 1837. It uses locally grown barley and mineral-rich water to produce Scotch whisky. Tours of the mashing, fermentation and distillation areas are available.

Choose a holiday apartment in The Scottish Borders according to your interests

The different trail lengths and types of experience can help you define the character of your trip more clearly. Coastal walks, forest and mountain biking routes, museums, historic trails, craft workshops or whisky can each form the focus. This makes it possible to choose a holiday apartment in The Scottish Borders to suit the themes you would particularly like to explore during your stay.

Discover more places in the Scottish Borders here: Galashiels, West Linton, Melrose, Coldstream, Duns, Peebles, Selkirk, Kelso, Innerleithen, Kershopefoot, Clovenfords, Morebattle, Lilliesleaf, Carlops, Earlston, Cockburnspath, Newcastleton, Eyemouth, Saint Boswells, Lauder, Gordon, Houndslow, Paxton, Heriot, Ettrickbridge, Roxburgh, Ashkirk, Walkerburn, Swinton, Ednam, Buccleuch and Traquair.

For the higher-level travel overview: Scotland.