Try and pass the impressive Leaderfoot Viaduct on the approach from Newstead
Scott’s View is a famous viewpoint in the Scottish Borders, about three miles east of Melrose. Overlooking the valley of the River Tweed, it is reputed to have been a favourite spot of the Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott — hence the name.
The Scottish Borders are famously beautiful, and Scott’s View provides an unrivalled panorama; try to either arrive early or late in the day, so you can enjoy it under the morning mists or the setting sun. To the northwest the view runs along Tweed valley towards Melrose and Black Hill, one of Scotland’s many Marilyns. To the southwest, farmlands roll beyond the village of Newton St Boswells. And, of course, to the west are the three great peaks of Eildon.
An unwitting wizard
According to legend, there weren’t always three peaks at Eildone. Michael Scott was a 13th century Scottish philosopher who has since been mythologised as a wizard and had some rather curious acts ascribed to him — including the three peaks at Eildone. As Sir Walter Scott wrote in ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel’, Scott conquered a foul demon by challenging it to weave ropes from sea-salt, which it failed to do — but only after it had already cleft Eildon hill into its three distinctive cones.
One last look
As the story goes, Sir Walter Scott would stop here so often on his way home to Abbotsford that his horses began to halt without command. And when he died in 1832, his funeral carriage passed this way en route to his burial and the horses stopped again, allowing their master one last look at the Borders landscape.
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