From Scotsgate, where the road to the north pierces the walls, the view is down the main street, Marygate, towards the town hall with its 150ft spire, like the one on St Martin-in-the-Fields in London. I had thought on first seeing it that the town hall was a church. But the real parish church, surrounded by sycamores, is that rarest of things: a product in 1650 of the rule of Oliver Cromwell, who is said to have insisted it should have no tower or spire.
Curving round along the Tweed, the medieval Quay Walls form the pavement in front of a series of lovely houses with Georgian facades, each distinctly different. One sports an improbable number of Venetian windows (each in three parts, with the central part taller and rounded at the top).
On the Quay Walls the wind blows over the Tweed where the marvellous old bridge, 1,164ft long, spans the river in 15 red sandstone arches. It looks medieval, but was built in the year King James got the Bible translated – in 1611. You can also see that great railway bridge (naturally invisible from trains speeding over it). It gains in beauty from the curve of its approach to the river. Of course I came by train, a pleasure in itself: £115 a head from London, return first class, booked in advance with a senior rail card.
It’s rather shocking that the railway station, built in 1850, occupies the site of the Great Hall of the medieval castle. On the footbridge steps from Platform 2 a plaque marks the spot where Edward I decided that John Balliol should be king of Scotland. This piece of vandalism did not worry the Victorians. It means the Castle Hotel (once the haunt of the painter LS Lowry) has an excellent view of the station.
I stayed in a wonderfully quiet holiday apartment at 2 Chapel Street, which could not be more central for pottering about the town. You could drive out into the beauties of Berwickshire and Northumberland, thick with castles, but I stuck to two feet.
The street pattern is far older than the Georgian frontages. Walk up Church Street and after two or three hundred yards it stops short, cut across by the wide ditch and rampart of the 1560s. Ahead, you can see the street begin again on the other side.
I was in Berwick in unseasonably chill, showery weather. But the westering sun lit up one side of Marygate. I sat in its warmth devouring two scoops from Mr C’s Ice Cream Parlour. I got another surprise then. A bunch of boys and girls were heading home and one asked what flavour ice cream I had (strawberry and lemon-meringue). I am accustomed in London to children’s default attitude being hostile mockery at best, like their elders’. But this enquiry seemed genuine and civil, though my bearded form in a thick overcoat must have looked strange.
Perhaps London is the odd-place-out in its unfriendliness.
Credit: Source link