We woke up to a beautiful sunny day on Friday morning. However the wind was blowing and made the day rather cold. We visited Scotts Park in Galashiels very briefly, there was not so much to see at this time of the year. Our main reason to drive to the big city was for David to get a haircut and shave, but the barber we had looked up before seemed to have a closed sign on the door. So off we were back to Melrose but this time we drove past the house were David's grandparents used to live. We also stopped on the way at the viaduct by the River Tweed. In Melrose David also finally got his haircut and nice macadamia oil rub to shine it off.

After lunch we thought we would visit the Abbotsford House that belonged to Sir Walter Scott who was a famous Scottish writer in 18th century. We had a look around the new visitor centre and exhibition about his life work while deciding if we would visit both the house and garden or just the garden. The exhibition was so good that it convinced us that we should definetly pay to see the house also from inside and so we went to get the tickets at the counter. David's mum thought we should first ask what time they close to make sure we would have enough time to have a look around, but to our surprise the lady at counter said it closed in October and wouldn't open again until April. However she advised we could go up to the balcony, which gave us a nice view of the what I would call castle rather than a mere house.

Since we had time on our hands, we drove on to Selkirk and visited Lochcarron - producer of tartans. Being our lucky day, the tours were of course finished for the day. It was interesting to have a look around the shop anyway. We found a little Forsyth clan book that explains the history of the clan that we of course had to get. Also Maria laid her eyes on a beautiful blue and red Cashmere blanket, but decided to leave it on the self when she saw the price tag of 299 pounds