Day 41 - Carberry to Hawick

16 May 2023

After a blissful night sleep at the castle, plus a breakfast suitable for royalty, Mum and I hit the road to continue our journey south. The landscape is green, rolling hills, with lots of trees of many different colours, with the occasional field of bright yellow canola plants. The colours really are stunning. We initially headed east and followed the coast along to Dunbar where Mum’s Duff and Hastie families lived in the mid-1700s through to the mid-1800s. Dunbar is quite a large town with a bustling main street and a very large parish church that overlooks the ocean. Once again, the locals were very helpful and even showed us where Johnstone’s Close used to be (Robert Duff, shoemaker, lived there in 1841). For the first time in my trip, I am really noticing the wind and it was particularly strong and cold at Dunbar, though the locals strongly disagreed with us.

From Dunbar we drove south down some very narrow country lanes to the grand metropolis of Abbey St Bathans. With such a grand name, Mum and I were both expecting an established village with pub, café, accommodation and houses. Instead it was tiny, with a beautiful little church, a phone box, a post box, and a wonderful hand written ‘you are here’ map. It was so charming and perfectly situated in a wooded valley alongside the Whiteadder Water. Just across the other side of the river we found Shannobank Farmhouse. In 1797 it was known as Channabank and was where Mum’s 3^rd Gt Grandfather, John Fairbairn, was born while his father was the steward there. There is so much history here for our Fairbairn family, and it was such a privilege to have the opportunity to spend some time in such a pretty setting, just taking it all in.

Clockwise from top left; colourful buildings of Dunbar, Shannobank farmhouse, the 'centre' of Abbey St Bathans, selfie in front of the Abbey St Bathans church, hand drawn map of Abbey St Bathans.

After even more little narrow country lanes through fields of green and yellow, we arrived at a tiny place called Makerstoun, which consisted of a manor house and a church with graveyard. Mum’s 4 Gt Grandfather, another John Fairbairn, was born here. Excitingly (well, to us!) there were some Fairbairn graves at the church, so now we need to do some more homework to see how they might fit into the family.

Top left is the main street of Hawick, top right is looking over the buildings to the fields surrounding Hawick. Middle top and the bottom photo are of the area around Makerstoun.

We are spending the next four nights in Hawick in a lovely old building that used to be the town’s bank. We are up on the top floor and just had the amazing surprise of watching about 60 people riding horses through the main street in some sort of parade. If it wasn’t for the cars parked on the side of the road, you would have thought that we had stepped back in time.