Hawick Reivers Festival, 25th March 2017

**cessna152towser** · 26th March 17, 12:43 PM

Saturday marked the start of outdoor events after the long winter and I was kitted out for the Hawick Reivers Festival, an annual renfaire event. This year was special for me as I would meet for the first time a recently discovered relative whose sister found me through her ancestry research. Terry lives in Glasgow and is my third cousin once removed. We share an interest in Scottish clans and history. Even though I have to wear the kilt waist lower since my hernia op, my Freedom Kilts olive cargo kilt received many favourable comments and I handed out quite a few business cards for Freedom Kilts over the day.

We met at the Horse Monument, a memorial to the Battle of Hornshole, 1514 which was a skirmish where local lads saw off an English raiding party from Hexham.

In the morning the reivers arrive in town

The reivers set up camp for the day

In the background of the photo above can be glimpsed the new Borders Distillery in Hawick, which is being constructed by the modification of a former engineering factory. The conversion is coming along nicely and should be up and running later this year. With a whisky distillery less than a mile from home and the House of Cheviot hose factory less than a mile in the opposite direction what's not to like about living here in Hawick, Scotland.

More to follow shortly

**cessna152towser** · 26th March 17, 01:15 PM

As is normal at Highland Games and Renfaires in Scotland there is no clan village, but usually a local clan hosts a tent and this year we were greeted by Clan Routledge.

We visited the Clan Turnbull statue which had been unveiled at the Turnbull Gathering here in 2009. William of Rule saved King Robert Bruce by wrestling to the ground a bull that had charged at the King. For this feat, the King rewarded William with the lands of Philiphaugh, now part of Selkirk, and re-named Rule as "Turnebull" .

We met up with Nicky and Duncan from the Strathleven Artisans. The Robert the Bruce Heritage Centre is run by this group of volunteers and historians, based in the village of Renton near the ancient capital of Strathclyde in Dumbarton, on the historical site of the King's manor house, where he spent the last years of his life.

Meanwhile my lovely wife Gabriele encountered this handsome gent clad in late seventeenth century costume.

The proceedings conclude at dusk when the pipe band leads the towns people out with their torches on the Hot Trod to burn the reivers out of their encampment on the edge of town. In reality when we arrive there we watch a fireworks display.

All too soon it was time for Hawick Scout Fellowship Pipe Band to muster and then to lead the inhabitants out on the Hot Trod.

That's all folks.