Walking in Coldstream

Walk 1 - Riverside walk

About 4 miles ( 6.5 km )

Start & Finish - Coldstream Town Hall

From the town hall, turn right along the High Street. Pass the Parish Church and the next crossroads turn left to walk down to Market Square, where you will find the Coldstream Guards Museum. Pass the Museum and turn right down Abbey Road. Continue to Tweed Green, where the Cistercian Priory once stood.
Turn left and follow the riverside path, known as Nun's walk. Note the burial ground of the Marjoribanks family. The Tweed flows along to your right. As you reach the end of Nun's Walk you see on your left the tall column and statue of Charles Marjoribanks, first MP for Berwickshire after the Reform act of 1832.
Town hall. Coldstream museum. Nun's walk. Chaerlie's monument
Continue ahead along the road to reach the bridge over the Tweed which marks the boundary with England. Just before the bridge is the Marriage house, which in its day was as famous as the now better known one at Gretna Green in the west. No fewer than 1.466 marriages were carried out here in 13 years. Coldstream Bridge was designed by John Smeaton and opened in 1766. A plaque on the bridge marks a visit by Robert Burns in 1787.
Marriage house. Tweed bridge. Robert Burns plaque

Leave the road just before the bridge and continue along the riverside path, a peaceful walk where you can enjoy the surroundings and the bird life. After about 800m turn left and cross a style onto on the track which rises steeply into Lennel village Turn right about 50m up the track onto a lovely path which leads up to the Old Kirk Yard. The ruined Kirk here was the parish church of the Burgh until 1718. At one time a guard kept watch here every night for body snatchers.
Tweed .Lennel kirk .Head stone
From the Churchyard, turn left along the A6112 into the village, which is very attractive. Lennel House, now a nursing home, has an interesting history - Beatrix Potter spent several holidays here in the late 18th Century. Opposite Oxenrig road, turn left down the steep track to the riverside path and back into Coldstream. From the bridge walk past the Marjoribanks Monument and along the High Street past Henderson Park to the starting point.

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