Jedburgh

Pubs in Town and Ancrum

The Canon Pub, on Exchange Street, is the sort of place where the staff ask whether the dogs would like a drink and then bring them treats. It gets called the best pub in Jedburgh on Tripadvisor with a regularity that suggests the reviewers mean it. There's one real ale on the hand pull — Black Sheep, most often — and live folk music on Monday nights. Nobody makes a fuss about any of it.

The Carters Rest keeps the town centre supplied too, and if you're willing to drive three miles to Ancrum, the Cross Keys sits on the village green and has been described as "filled with character and characters, fuelled by exceptional beer and a fantastic atmosphere." Walkers use it as a resting point, which is a good sign for a pub.

Local Flavours and Abbey Stone

For eating, Simply Scottish on the High Street does home baking and family meals all day, with vegetarian and vegan options, and comes third of nineteen restaurants in town. A few miles out toward Denholm, Born in the Borders occupies a converted farm steading on the banks of the Teviot — a brewery, deli, farm shop and café that started in 2011 and now brews its own beer and gin. Briggsy's handles the butchery. And there are Jethart Snails, a dark minty boiled sweet said to come from a recipe a French prisoner handed to a local during the Napoleonic Wars, which is a long time to keep a sweet in production.

The abbey dominates the skyline, as it has for eight centuries. David I founded a priory here in 1138 with monks from Beauvais; the church was largely complete by 1200. The lower pillars are chunky Romanesque cylinders, the upper arcades delicate early-Gothic points, and there's a great west rose window from around 1440. It's a ruin now, but a commanding one.

Parish Church and Border Walks

Up at the junction of Oxnam Road and Newcastle Road stands the Old Parish Church, built in the 1870s when the old abbey church had grown too small and too dilapidated to serve. It's Category A listed, dark sandstone with cream detailing and a three-storey octagonal bell tower, and it faces the A68 with some confidence.

The walking is the main event. St Cuthbert's Way passes nearby along the line of Dere Street, the Roman road that ran from York to the Forth. The Borders Abbeys Way makes a 68-mile circuit linking Jedburgh with Kelso, Melrose and Selkirk. And north at Peniel Heugh, the Waterloo Monument rewards a 226-step spiral stair with a wooden balcony and a view across the whole valley — the key borrows from the estate office at Bonjedward.

Harestanes Outdoors

At Harestanes, near Ancrum, there's a countryside centre with one of the biggest outdoor playgrounds in the Borders, its towers built to echo the abbey. Dogs are welcome on the trails, though not on Peniel Heugh.

Arrival and Living Traditions

Jedburgh has no railway; you reach it on the A68, forty-eight miles south of Edinburgh. The Callant's Festival fills two weeks each summer with ceremonial horse rides, but the older tradition is Jethart Hand Ba', a mass street handball game over two centuries old, played the Thursday after Shrove Tuesday. Which side you play for depends on whether you were born north or south of the Market Cross.