Bonnie Scotland - Off With Her Head!

The town square of Jedburgh at night

Sometimes words are not pronounced the way they look in the Scottish language.  Tonight we find ourselves in Jedburgh in the south of Scotland.  The name of this place is spoken "Jed-burra".  It is a nice town with some significant history, and is located in the Borders region of Scotland.  

The Borders is the area near the border with England.   Scotland and England are two separate countries and are part of the United Kingdom.   Much of our time in Scotland is typically spent up north in the Highlands, but this time we are exploring a different part of the land. 

We arrived here last night, after a long day of driving 400 miles up from the south of England.  We met up with Fiona's brother Duncan and his wife Donna, at the airport in Edinburgh (pronounced Ed-in-burra).

The rain showed up on the way, and it rained hard last night, but the weather was okay today.  The weather here is pretty much like Oregon, although it gets dark a little earlier.  

We went about exploring Jedburgh today and immediately were immersed in the rich history of the area.  There is a well preserved house known as the Mary Queen of Scots House, where Mary stayed in 1566, with a terrific museum to the much misunderstood lady.  She had a tough life, and even though she was Queen for a while, it didn't last long.  There was much treachery, intrigue, and scheming going on, and she was eventually deposed.  

This is a rather polite way of saying they chopped off her head.  Royal transition could be brutal in those days.  Before she died, she did give birth to a son who eventually was known as King James, the first king of the combined Scotland and England.  He was also the guy who was responsible for the King James Bible.  

The view out the window of the Mary House

And at this same house was a base for an ancient cross placed here by the Augustinian Monks in the approximate year of 750 AD.  This goes back a long ways, but has managed to stand the test of time.  

And also, there are pear trees on the property and the surrounding area that were once the pride of Britain and were a hot commodity in London for many years.    You can see the stone and the pear trees in the picture below. 

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On the other side of town, which is not far, there is a spectacular Abbey made by later generations of the Augustinian Monks, started around 1150 AD.  Kinda hard for us North Americans to imagine stuff this old.  It's a well preserved relic these days and has some fantastic views. 

Part of the reason these buildings last so long is that they are made of stone.  The stone, like we saw previously in Bath, England, is quarried locally and is very durable.  Buildings made of wood do not last this long.  If you want to make history, make it out of stone. 

The size of these structures never fails to impress.  How did they build this stuff a thousand years ago?  And the stones fit together with precision that would be hard to replicate today.  

It's hard to grasp the scale of these places, and the passing of time. 

In fact, there is a display that talks about the methods used to design and build such an Abbey, and it all started three hundred years before Columbus discovered America.