Tweed, is books: Sir Walter
Scott’s purplest prose was
reserved for the ruined abbey,
which the author preserved.
The Bookroom keeps up
Melrose’s reputation as a
literary town year-round,
while the Borders Book
Festival attracts top literary
stars every summer.
Here people judge the town
by its stunning cover and stay
for as long as they can. A large
proportion of residents are
aged over 45 and many are
retired — one of the biggest
building projects is a block of
retirement flats.
If you’re looking to do a big
shop, there’s a decent sized
Co-op or you can make the
five-mile trip to Galashiels
where you’ll find Tesco, Asda
and Aldi. Otherwise there’s
always a scone close at hand.
Best place to live if... Thou
would’st wander an ancient
ruined abbey by the pale
moonlight. Or just wander the
hills followed by the pub.
Best address The sandstone
homes on Ormiston Terrace.
£311,000NORTH BERWICK,
EAST LOTHIAN FForget Edinburgh. For a long
time, this extraordinarily
pretty little town dominatedby the conical volcanic plug of
North Berwick Law was the
capital’s most desirable
commuter address, its
train station allowing
residents to shuttle to
and from the city in 30
minutes. The WFH
revolution has changed
all that, making North
Berwick a place where
people work as well as live —
and live extremely well.
In high summer, when the
town’s red sandstone
architecture seems to glow in
the sun, a tidal pool throngs
with children (there’s an
honesty box for borrowing
buckets and spades), and
people cluster around the
quayside Lobster Shack,
dangling their feet over the
sea wall sipping wine and
dining on catches of the day.
The long narrow high street
bears many hallmarks of a
local economy in rude health,
while the queues for the
croissants at Bostock Bakery
on the weekend are testament
to residents’ hearty appetite
for the good life. Independent
businesses — from craft and
interior shops to restaurants
such as the Herringbone and
Osteria — comfortably
outnumber chain stores. In a
former warehouse Steampunk
Coffee is a speciality roastery
and café with roaring fires and
a pop-up vinyl record shop,
Orange Moon, upstairs, while
the Big Blu, a retro pizza van,
delivers once a week.
The golden sands of West
Bay and Milsey Bay — either
side of the town’s ancient
harbour — are spotless. Come
summer, the crowds swell to
enjoy the new North Berwick
Festival and the ever-popular
Fringe by the Sea festival.
Inga Ramsay, a massage
therapist, and her husband,
Ash, bought in early 2020.
They were attracted by the
schools — particularly North
Berwick High School, rated
the 16th best state school in
Scotland by The Times in 2021,
for their three children, but
the lifestyle has proved to be
top class. “In the summer Ash
finishes work at five and we’ve
still got three or four hours of
sunlight and can head straight
down to the beach,” Inga says.
Best place to live... To spend
more time on the beach, and
less time worrying about,
well, everything else.
Best address Dirleton
Avenue or Fidra Road, close to
the golf club and the shores.
£401,000GLASGOW: SHAWLANDS D
Just how many coffee shops
does one area need? It turns
out that in this small pocket of
Glasgow’s sprawling and
ever-evolving South Side you
can never have enough beans.
Two miles south of the River
Clyde, G41 is bougie yet still
affordable compared with
many Glasgow postcodes. It’s
a place where people don’t
just pass through, but put
down roots in one of the
semis, traditional red and
blond sandstone tenements,
or villas — engendering a
community spirit captured in
artist Stephen O’Neil’s series
of celebratory posters hung
from streetlights proposing to
“keep Shawlands braw”.
Wind back a few years, and
Skirving Street and Deanston
Drive ( just off Shawlands’
main drag Kilmarnock Road)
were nothing much to shout
about. Today, they form
Glasgow’s premium cake and
coffee quarter, from plant-
based café Frankie to
multi-roaster coffee shop It
All Started Here, while the
Deanston Bakery is the best
sourdough on the south side.
There’s a Morrisons
superstore and Pollokshaws
Road covers the practical and
supports an increasingly cool
array of local businesses,
including music and arts
venue the Glad Café;
horticultural Aladdin’s cave
Aperçu; Malaysian diner
Julie’s Kopitiam; and Godshot
studio, where Nordic and
Japanese art and design meet
via high-end patisserie.
Even the area’s most
notorious eyesore, the
dilapidated 1960s Shawlands
Arcade shopping centre, is
earmarked for demolition, to
be replaced with a £68 million
development of 300 new
homes with a landscaped
garden and doubtless more
coffee shops. Shawlands is
bordered to the east by
Queen’s Park, and to the west
by the 361-acre Pollok Country
Park — a muddy-wellies idyll
replete with Highland cattle.
At Pollok’s heart lies the
Burrell Collection that has just
reopened its doors after a
near-six-year refurbishment,
restoring the jewel in the
Southside’s cultural crown.
Best place to live if... You
love park walks with a coffee
in hand — and a dog on a lead.
Best address The avenues
above Pollokshaws Road.
£245,000
MELROSE, BORDERS E
It was at the picturesque
Greenyards stadium in 1883
that a pair of local butchers
invented rugby sevens, and
the love of the oval ball is still
strong in this affluent Borders
town. There are five pubs or
hotel bars — from the Ship Inn
to the Kings Arms hotel — on
the main drag alone, many of
them showing rugby at any
given time. There’s an annual
tournament every April and
free parking at the Southern
Knights’ club on non-match
days — as well as Bean ’n
Gone, a coffee stall run from
an old horse trailer by the
team captain Craig Jackson.
“Wherever you go you
know somebody, it’s a
small place and you can
all look after each other,”
says Jackson, hailing the
community spirit which
helped him to get his business
off the ground in 2020.
“Because we were outside and
did takeaway we were allowed
to stay open,” he says. “All the
locals were coming out for a
walk and grabbing a coffee, a
little bit of sense of purpose, a
little bit of normality.”
The other passion in this
historic town, which sits
beneath the looming peaks of
the Eildon Hills by the RiverCows and
coast
Some lucky
North Berwick
residents get
sea views
towards the
Bass Rock, left.
Above: Pollok
Country Park in
GlasgowBest Places to Live 2022 Scotland
SALLY ANDERSON; SKULLY/ALAMYOn the up...
With the building of a new
train station on the east coast
mainline underway in East
Linton, this village could well
be the next stop for those
looking to migrate out of the
capital to East Lothian.
Across the Firth of Forth,
Lower Largo has the key
characteristics of any quaint
fishing village in the East
Neuk, yet without the same
hysterical prices as, say,^
Elie or Crail.
Upsizers moving out of
Glasgow’s overpriced West
End in search of a house with
a garden are looking towards
Scotstoun, a residential
district close to the north
bank of the River Clyde and
Victoria Park. Those looking
to move out of Glasgow
altogether are looking
towards the likes of Drymen.
It’s surrounded by
countryside, yet within
commuting distance of
Glasgow. Lastly, its upmarket
outpost Broughty Ferry was
in our list last year, but don’t
write off Dundee, which is
looking increasingly like
Scotland’s most inviting city,
with affordable house prices
and a thriving tech sector.April 10, 2022 23