It's Spring

Well, today it certainly felt like it! The sun shone in a blue blue sky. The birds sang their little hearts out, and the daffodils.....

.....well, they just bloomed and nodded their heads all along the riverbank. Beautiful they are, and I dare say there will be more to come!

That's Priorsford Bridge in the distance.

This is how greengrocers' shops ought to look! The shop itself is filled with boxes of fruit and veg, packets of wholefoods, shelves full of jars of this and trays of that.... and it spreads out onto the pavement outside, with more boxes of veg and fruit, strings of onions, packets of herbs, as well as racks piled with trays of bulbs and spring flowers for planting out, and buckets of daffodils - 3, or was it 4, bunches for £1 - and other mixed spring flowers for the home. It is an Aladdin's Cave, full of treasures!

Strangely, this wee shop has had quite a chequered history. A variety of businesses have tried to make a go of things here, with nothing lasting very long. I think that may have changed now.

Biggiesknowe - looking west

The stair on the left leads up to two little flats in a row of four up, four down, that apparently were once known as the Merry Eight. (?) They were built at the beginning of the 20th century, and were cottages for weavers. The white house next door is much older - the Chambers House - the one with its windows overlooking Cuddy Burn, built by the grandfather of the Chambers Dictionaries boys - see 28 January.

Two doors along the little stone house was the birthplace of John Veitch who became a Professor of Logic at Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities.

The group of houses at the end are, on the ground floor the street side flats with the upper flats accessed by the balcony on the burn side - see 24 January.

This was once the main route from the west into town, whereas now, at the end of the road, if you turn left you can now cross the Cuddy bridge to the High Street. Biggiesknowe was considered to be part of the old town.

The first duckle-ings of 2009

A friend's daughter always used to call them duckle-ings, so duckle-ings they have remained!

These are the first ones I have seen on Cuddy Burn this year - just a small family this one. I do hope they survive. Theirs is a precarious life on the river.

Looking the other way

As the title suggests, this is a photo looking the other way from the previous one! This is the Mercat Cross again but looking east along the Eastgate.

The steeple is from the old Eastgate church which is now the theatre and Arts Centre, while the pale green building with the four windows facing is The Green Tree hotel. To the right is the Scottish Episcopal church with the Post Office behind it.

The Mercat Cross

Well, I WAS going to add another photo last night but again had problems with blogspot not doing what it oughter! Anyway this morning all is well again so here goes!

This is a view down the High Street, with the Mercat Cross in the foreground. Dating back several centuries, the "cross" has been moved a few times, but is pretty much back where it stood originally. It was the hub of Peebles in years gone by, the place where announcements were delivered to the townspeople, and round which the Peebles market traded. Mercat is the Scots for market, though once, one American visitor, mistook the word, asking at the tourist information centre where she could see the meercats. That caused a bit of amusement all round when the poor woman was put straight!

Seven swans a-swimming

There is always a pair of swans on the river Tweed at Peebles, but obviously the cygnets grow up and eventually leave, as the resident number of swans never increases. This winter there were five youngsters, here looking as elegant as their parents, but still with baby grey feathers. I love to watch them swimming in line, usually ma and pa first followed by the family, one after the other.

The arts accounted for

Apologies for absence once more. I had a bit of an accident recently and haven't felt like doing much. Getting better slowly though.

Anyway, by the time I arrived in Peebles 22 years ago, the church in the Eastgate had closed and was known as the Eastgate Hall, where exhibitions, sales, coffee mornings, fairs and suchlike took place.

However there was call in Peebles for an arts centre under one roof, and after much discussion it was decided that the Eastgate Hall was the place it should be at.

Eventually, after a great deal of fundraising and applying for grants the go ahead was given. The interior was gutted, a new floor put in to house the theatre upstairs, and the whole of this side wall removed to be replaced with a steel and glass frontage revealing the foyer and cafe/bar. The theatre doubles as a cinema on occasions, and the tiered seating can be telescoped back to allow for special events to take place that require a hall type setting. Downstairs as well as the foyer there are offices, an exhibition room and dressing rooms.

Each quarter a new programme of plays, musical gigs of one sort or another, films, lectures, etc. comes out, starring local theatre groups and musicians as well as the weel kent (well known) and downright famous!

Eastgate

The word gate in Scots does not mean a structure that opens to allow people to enter or exit, or closes to keep them in or out. It comes from the word gait which means a way - a roadway or pathway - so the Eastgate or gait was the road to the east. Round the corner is the Northgate, similarly the road to the north. There was no need for fancy street names in centuries past. Eastgate is a continuation of the High Street or Highgait or high road, the main street of the town.

The centre of Peebles is very much a residential area as well as a commercial one, so most of the upper storeys of the High Street, Eastgate and Northgate have been converted into flats, where they would once have been the homes of the burgesses of the town.

Peebles' West End

This is quite an interesting picture. It is taken as you approach the road roundabout at the end of the High Street, from Tweed Bridge. Ahead is the Buchan house (see 11 January), and continuing past the red door at the side (apparently the old front door on the High Street was red) will take you across Cuddy Bridge and into Old Town. To the right and in front of the Buchan house is the High Street. The buildings in shadow from the corner to the bay windows on the right were till about 18 months ago, the old police station, complete with cells in the basement, while the house with the dormer windows to the right of the photo was the police inspector's house.

Now, over the road, the half-timbered building houses a pub downstairs and Italian restaurant upstairs. It didn't always look like this. In old photos it's stone fronted! On the other side of the bulding is the Parish Church - you can just see a tiny bit of the church tower. However I found out something rather interesting from the local newspaper this week about the nickname of the pub. Although it is really The Bridge Inn, formerly the Tweedside Inn, the local folk call it The Trust - and that is apparently due to the fact that when the bridge was widened in 1900, the town council wanted to buy it, and along with the bridge works improve the appearance of the inn. It was bought but for some reason never altered; the widened bridge re-opened, and the town council owned a pub which they really didn't know what to do with. Several ideas were suggested, including demolition, but in the end the lease was sold off to the East of Scotland Public House Trust Company, and that is how the nickname came into general use! Incidentally, the lease was a short one and since then the pub has changed hands several times.

As for the upstairs, it was a Chinese restaurant in recent years, with Chinese Frankie and his Italian wife in charge. One of their daughters married an Italian lad and when Frankie retired, the young couple took over to run it as the Italian restaurant it is today!