Sir Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott was fired from his earliest years by a patriotic love of his native Scotland - ‘Caledonia’ - which he eulogised in The Lay of the Last Minstrel: ‘O Caledonia! stern and wild, / Meet nurse for a poetic child! / Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, / Land of the mountain and the flood’. His novels and poems fashioned a heroic, romantic image of lochs, glens and ancient ruins which brought visitors flocking to ‘his’ Scottish Borders and The Trossachs.
Born in Edinburgh in 1771, he spent much of his childhood on his grandfather's farm at Sandyknowe in the Borders, later recalling Smailholm Tower ‘which charmed my fancy's waking hour’ in the poem Marmion. He studied law and became Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire. But his true passion was for local folklore and ballads, which he collected and published in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.
Each summer from 1804 he lived near Clovenfords and sat by the River Tweed to write Marmion and The Lady of the Lake, actually set at Loch Katrine. The lake also inspired tales of the outlaw Rob Roy - but today's loch cruises aboard the ss Sir Walter Scott are peaceful!
From 1812, Scott built his Borders home at Abbotsford, outside Melrose, and here he wrote his Waverley novels. The mansion is open to the public and it's certainly worth visiting Scott's View: the writer's favourite picnic spot opens up panoramic vistas of the Eildon Hills. An 11-mile (18 km) circular cycle route from Melrose takes in Scott's View as well as Dryburgh Abbey where the author is buried.
The landscapes of Scott's Borders and Trossachs are a paradise for outdoor pursuits, from bird-watching to quad bike riding. Walk the challenging coast-to-coast Southern Upland Way (212 miles/340km); go game or coarse fishing - the River Tweed alone has hundreds of miles; make the most of great golf courses with a Freedom of the Fairways Golf Passport; or windsurf on Loch Earn in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park.
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