Thursday 17th July 2025
I'm on an early morning LNER heading north for my first Scottish ticks of the 2024/25 season. I keep forgetting Scotland exists, so to any Scottish BRAPees, I sincerely apologise and will strive to do better in the coming months.
I'm approximately 33.33333% of my way to Scottish completion. Pathetic! I've had a decent go at Edinburgh & the Lothians, Ayrshire, Dumfries & Galloway, the Kingdom of Fife and Tayside, and save for long ago overnighters in Glasgow, Aberdeen and Inverness, I've done little else.
Take 'Borders'. A less hipster unloved Northumberland. Never once have I set foot in it. And I live in York, not like it is a million miles away like Jersey, Leominster or Market Harborough. Rubbish of me. But rectifiable, even on a #ThirstyThursday such as this.
I had to change at Newcastle on the way up, and board what looked like a lost Transpennine Express to take me up to Edinburgh, where my fellow passengers were such incompetent berks, they struggled to take a seat on an empty train containing approximately zero reservations. "Ahhm just not used to it!" wails a bulky lassie from Dunbar with a gravy stained Batfink tee shirt.
Waverley is the most confusing train station in the UK, making Brum New St. look like child's play. Despite ten mins to find my way to Platform 3 for the 'connexion', I bust a gut to make it in time.
Borders only has two 'pub-useful' stations which I can see, not very helpful, plus they are really close together - Galashiels and Tweedbank. I hop off at the former, and find the bus station just across the way.
Hawick pronounced 'Hoyk' is my debut location, two ticks, both early openers, and I'd had to wake up 6:30am just to ensure I was here not too long after 12 noon. £8.50 they ching me for a single - WTF, this'd be £2 in England?!! Sassenach tax?
I hot foot it the 10-15 mins across town, and for the first time today the true Scottishness of the situation hits me as I see that McEwan's laughing cavalier winking back at me from this cute corner bar tucked away off the main drag. Exchange Bar (Dalton's), Hawick (3249 / 5736) takes its place in history as the first ever BRAPA Borders tick. Effortlessly local, gentle and sweet, wee and braw. The softly spoken landlady who pulled her first pint here in 1762 calls me 'dear' at regular intervals and I'm surprised she doesn't say 'you'll have had your tea'. Her takings have gone down since Wetherspoons opened in town, I don't have the heart to tell her that's where I'm off next. One ale on which is probably for the best in Borders. By a brewery called 'Born'. It drinks bonnily. And with her and the locals nestled right by the loos and exit, there's a quick farewell chat where I make my 'Spoons confessional' but take the edge off by saying '....it probably won't be as good as here'. I think they believed me. I think I believed myself.
After all, I passed Wetherspoons earlier and there was an ambulance outside, old man collapsed down the side street with blood coming out of his head, Tennents trickling down the gutter (what a waste!) .... crowd on gawping onlookers peering mawkishly, the hypocrites. When I returned, two ambulances ......
And with potential back / neck / spinal injuries (delete as appropriate), most of the staff had been enlisted in helping to move the chap, a situation currently ongoing. Crikey! Welcome to the Bourtree, Hawick (3250 / 5737), and I selfishly think that I have under half an hour before the hourly bus when I see one poor YTS lad serving an increasingly long queue of people. Not the classic #PubQueue to annoy the shit out of you, as it went horizontally along the front of the bar. It was the only civilised common sense thing to do in the circs and worked well. I tell the sausage couple behind me I'm against the clock as the lady in front faffs with fried versus scrambled eggs. Another problem is ' too much thinking time' and I'm soon revising my 'go to' Thornbridge Jaipur order having seen a fascinating can of ' Fierce Iron Brew' in the fridge, based on the Scottishest drink ever, "made from Girders". I even refuse a glass, the only time in BRAPA history outside Shipley's Sir Norman Rae in 2014 I've gone glassless in a 'Spoons. It is a dangerously neckable drop and with the bar situation calming down, barman pops over, sniffs my can, and tells me I've piqued his curiosity and when his shift ends, he's having one himself! Lad. With a fine 8.5/10 carpet and a haunted mahogany staircase, this is a quality 'Spoons. And against the odds, I make the bus. Wot drama here in Hawick!
Back in Galashiels, it was time for the two pubs there. Borders only has 18 in the GBG in total so you could say I was 'cooking' in the modern parlance.
Another 'Spoons was up first .....
A far drabber duller grimmer Spoons, though one with cute corner booths and a better overall shape to it, Hunters Hall, Galashiels (3251 / 5738) had an actual Scottish guest ale on to supplement the Abbot Ale so I get my mouth around a devilish 'Edinburgh Dark Dry Stout'. Quality at £1.49 with a WickingMan voucher. I couldn't see any Jaipur, never mind Iron Brew, tsk! Two of the five handpulls are fruity ciders, ugh. The carpet is a 6/10 and looks like it has been coughed up by a bad cat. I call the very pierced skinhead behind the bar 'mate' but when my eyes focus, turns out it is a woman so I call her mate again just to be on the safe side, putting on a Rotherham accent cos that's the kinda thing they'd do. And the place was air conditioned to the point of being too chilly, how is this possible on such a humid day? Yep, this place lacked pzazz and the points definitely go to Bourtree.
In fact, the points go to Hawick over Galashiels. We'll have to make it 2-0 as Dalton's was superior to what follows ......
.... because the charcoal grey exterior on what should be a vibrant pink Salmon Inn, Galashiels (3252 / 5739) extends into the inside. The landlady should be called EL James because this pub contains fifty shades of grey, plus fifty shades more (of olive green). The ale? Well, let's party like we're in rural Oxfordshire 1972. Morland Original or Speckled Hen. #Locale Served in those hideous six edged chunky glasses which might actually beat Camden and Adnams for my most despised glassware in pubs. Atmopshere is local and rugged with 'corner of the mouth' banter. With my barrel being frantically changed because no one else has asked for cask yet today (imagine my shock, that's sarcasm), I try to join in a tiny bit but just get scandalised looks like 'we don't know youse'. Ouch! I felt suitably cowed but took it in my stride cos I'm the bigger man, but as a consolation prize, the lady with Donald Trump tan gives me a friendly 'aye'. The carpet is an unquenchable 6, the freshly on Morland is 'drinkable' and my Tweedbank train is on the horizon thank heavens.
At this stage, I was quietly optimistic about achieving my Melrose duo which on a map looked an easy toddle from Tweedbank station.
However, I'd underestimated the walk (more like 35 mins, not 10!) and with no bus imminent, plus hopes of a late Edinburgh tick before the 7pm train home, Melrose will live to fight another day.
More happily, I'd spied a brewery tap not far from Tweedbank station and these things are always great pre-emptive shouts, especially in absolute beer deserts like the Borders ......
Not the funnest comfiest places to drink, but when you're sat there in 2am mid September with your takeaway Chinese, new GBG and highlighter pen and spreadsheets, pulling a cross ticking all nighter, you definitely get a tingle in the testes when such pre-emptives make it. So fingers crossed for Tempest Brewery Tap Room, Tweedbank. Staff are vaguely engaging, it has the squeaky floor of a school gym qualities, a cross stitch subscription arrives the same time as me to put the 'twee' in tweedbank, and some high quality pineapple salty homebrew which was hard to neck in the allotted time but I opened up my second throat and went for the big swallow! That sounded weird. I've also identified a similar brew tap t'other side of Galashiels at Innerleithen which has a GBG pub which is surely going to get binned for selling 'fresh' Hobgoblin beer, which is probably actually fresh, but is FAKE cask and CAMRA are very dirty on that sort of schadenfreude. So I'll be looking at the forthcoming 2026 Borders GBG entries with a fascination I'd normally only reserve for Cornwall and East Yorkshire.
The reason I necked that tricky pint so expertly was to ensure I got this Edinburgh tick that has been living renfrew in my big fat heid all year ..... probably the most famous Edinburgh pub I've still to do and only remaining tick in the city centre.
Yes, the famous Rebus pub Oxford Bar, Edinburgh (3253 / 5740) not the slimmest of detectives in his later years is our John, though maybe I was slightly thinking of Robbie Cracker by this muddled fifth pint stage. Anyway, my point is that unlike the usual Johnny-come-lately's' who flock to this fine auld inn, I decide not to be intimidated by the local bar blocking clutch and secrete myself into a gorgeous carved out bench seat directly behind the woman's big hairy arse. Every other stranger creeping up to the bar for service immediately whisk their drinks off to distant side room, but I'm convinced it is here in the main bar where the magic happens .... and whilst I didn't witness any, there was a 'visceral authenticity invisibly on display' (WTF?) to quote the Notes sections of my phone. Swear I was turning into one of those drunken bullshit poets who hawk around the pubs of Dublin trying to sell their dire verse to unsuspecting tourists. In July 2000 with Corrs top of the charts with Breathless, I paid €6 for a dreadful anthology about flowers growing on St Stephen's Green and I've never forgiven the Irish. The Penteland drank 'okay', but kinda explains why this pub ain't always a GBG shoo-in. As is always the case in Edinburgh, everyone is preferable to the big red T. DELIGHTED though to get it ticked.
All okay with the train back except an unscheduled change at Newcastle. But to be able to do something like this on a #ThirstyThursday really gives me hope for more outlandish midweek trips in the 2025/26 season as 'local options' become sparser as I edge closer to 75% completion.
Join me Wednesday, for a difficult day in East Sussex.
Keep it pub, I'm off for my Kedgeree, Si
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