NB page 3 centre

Rivers have been often been used to define regional boundaries,, but this approach has little relevance in modern life. As a traveller, the only sense of transition that I get is when I cross the hills, using one of the numerous routes across the Pennines, or travelling across Rannoch Moor. The sense is strongest at Carter Bar, with the possibility of great views across the Borders and a steep, but largely hidden, descent into Northumbria. But the modern tourist industry has designed the crossing to look like a border post.

To be fair, for many years it was the site of the annual tryst where the English and the Scots Lairds of the Marches met with their men to settle outstanding grievances under the rough laws of this wild landscape.

I remember from my childhood that it was just a place to stop for some fresh air, and a bit of a pic-nic. But now when I stop there, I sense the transition of the high pass and I think of many other "summit" areas where competing families could have met in "no-man's land" to prevent the worst excesses of territorial rivalry.

Beattock has even more of the mountain pass about it, with Glasgow beckoning to the north and empty border lands to the east and west, and down the valley of the Eden to Carlisle

The hard road from Carlisle to Hawick, passing by the grim Hermitage Castle on what is now the A7, similarly takes us through a landscape where sheep outnumbered people many times over, and they and the hardy cattle were the currency of generations of rievers. Over generations this land was ravaged by the territorial ambitions of Scots and English kings, queens and nobility.

The main split in North Britain is not north-to-south, but east-to-west. The uplands form the natural barriers. The populations of Barnoldswick and Todmorden have become apoplectic in the past at the slightest hint that a boundary line on the map might be altered. Sometimes it is difficult to believe that the Wars of the Roses were over 500 years ago.