Scenic Point in Scottish Borders

The Eildon Hills above Melrose in the Scottish Borders are three volcanic hills rising from the surrounding farmland of the Tweed Valley in a distinctive triple profile visible from a wide area of the Borders, providing one of the finest views of any accessible summit in the region and combining a rich geological heritage with a density of archaeological sites that makes them one of the most historically significant hill groups in Scotland. The summit of Eildon Hill North was occupied by a massive Iron Age hill fort, one of the largest in Scotland. The Iron Age settlement on Eildon Hill North enclosed within its massive ramparts an area of approximately 16 hectares and contained several hundred house platforms, suggesting a population of considerable size in a fortified township that may have been the principal settlement of the Selgovae tribe whose territory covered much of the central Borders. The Roman fort of Trimontium was established at the foot of the hills near present-day Newstead in the first century AD, the Romans recognising the strategic importance of the hills that had already defined this section of the Tweed Valley as a place of authority and power. The hills are also the setting for the legend of Thomas the Rhymer, the thirteenth-century prophetic poet Thomas of Erceldoune who was said to have been taken to Elfland through a door in the Eildon Hills and to have returned with the gift of prophecy. The combination of the archaeology, the legend and the outstanding views from the summit make the Eildon Hills one of the most rewarding walks in the Borders.

St Abb's Head on the Berwickshire coast of Scotland is a dramatic headland of volcanic rocks rising over 90 metres from the North Sea, a National Nature Reserve managed by the National Trust for Scotland whose seabird colony, the most important on the eastern Scottish coast south of the Firth of Forth, makes it one of the principal seabird watching locations in Scotland. The combination of the dramatic cliff scenery, the breeding seabirds and the clear water of the St Abbs marine reserve below makes this one of the finest coastal visits in the southeast of Scotland. The seabird colony supports over 50,000 breeding seabirds including guillemot, razorbill, kittiwake, fulmar, shag, herring gull and a small number of puffins, concentrated on the stack and cliff ledges that provide the characteristic Berwickshire cliff scenery. The guillemot and kittiwake colonies are the most numerous and the most vocal, their calls audible from a considerable distance, and the clifftop viewing points provide excellent observation of the crowded ledges during the breeding season from May to August. The marine reserve below the cliffs is one of the clearest and most biologically diverse temperate waters in the British Isles, the combination of the rocky reef habitat and the relatively unpolluted North Sea water creating conditions that attract divers from across Britain. The kelp forests, anemone communities and fish populations of the reserve have been the subject of sustained scientific monitoring and provide a baseline understanding of temperate marine ecology. The coastal walking on the cliffs south from St Abbs village toward Fast Castle, a dramatically positioned ruin on a stack below the cliff top, provides excellent cliff scenery in a landscape quite different from the more gentle shores elsewhere on the east coast.