Undiscovered Scotland

 

Round Eyemouth, A Guide for Visitors and Locals is a charming book. Its focus is very much on the fishing port of Eyemouth, but its coverage extends well beyond, making this a useful guide for anyone interested in, or visiting, a chunk of the east coast of Scotland and England extending from Dunbar in the north to Alnmouth in the south, and reaching as far inland as Duns and Coldstream.

The authors say the following about their book: "We hope you find this book useful as a starting point for your own adventures and explorations into a fabulous and lesser-known part of the UK. We have tried to brief ideas, information and locations to help you to get to know more about the area." The book that has emerged is an excellent primer that includes a pretty comprehensive coverage of things to do and places to see within the area, set in context by just the right amount of historical background. Here you can find out about Black Friday, the disaster that cost the lives of 189 fishermen along this stretch of coast on 14 October 1881, or about graverobbing, witchcraft or smuggling (referred to locally as "free trade"): plus much else besides.

Add into the mix a over hundred contemporary or historical photographs and plenty of maps, a chapter about access rights in Scotland and another about the Berwickshire coastal path, plus background on fishing techniques, and you end up with a book that is very difficult to categorise but which truly deserves to be read by everyone living in or visiting the area it covers, and Eyemouth in particular.

To get the most out of a visit to any particular location you need an idea of the places that are worth looking out for, and it helps greatly to have some understanding of how the location you are visiting came to be the way it is, a sense of the key historical events, and a feel for the main issues facing its residents today. Round Eyemouth gives you all that, and it gives you it in an accessible and easy to read style: which more than anything else communicates the sheer love and enthusiasm of its two authors for their subject.