Festival of Common Riding every summer recalls past, when townsfolk rude around town ensuring other towns had not encroached on their common land. Hermitage Castle Fourteenth-century castle on Hermitage Water. Violent history recalls stories of death by boiling, drowning and starvation. Mary, Queen of Scots rode here in 1566 to visit her lover Bothwell, who lay wounded. The Hirsel Country residence of Lord Home, former Prime Minister.
Grounds are open to public, stable yard now houses folk museum and craft centre.
Picnic site and paths through grounds. Jedburgh Abbey, founded 1138, with tower and roofless nave. Castle jail converted to museum of Victorian prison life. Kelso Town at confluence of Tweed and Teviot rivers with wide square, elegant houses and five-arched bridge. Kelso Abbey, now in ruins, was founded in 1128 by monks from Chartres, in France.