Leaderfoot

About Leaderfoot

This spot, where the River Leader joins the River Tweed, has been a crossing point since the earliest times. The Romans built a bridge here to carry Dere Street on its route to the north. The river was crossed again in 1780 when this beautiful bridge was built. This was to carry a Turnpike Road from Lauder to the Carter Bar. At its narrowest the Drygrange Bridge is only 16 feet wide yet it carried all the traffic on the A68 until the new, and much less attractive, bridge was opened slightly downstream in 1973. The handsome viaduct upriver from the road bridge was opened in 1863 to carry the Berwickshire Railway from Newtown St Boswells via Earlston and Duns to join the East Coast main line at Reston. It was last used for trains in 1965.
The River Tweed runs for nearly 100 miles through the heart of the Borders. Along with the Cheviot Hills, the Abbeys, the Woollen Industry, the Reivers and Rugby it is one of the icons of the Borderland. Not surprising then that Ogilvie wrote poetry about it. Here he links the Tweed’s journey to the other icons and to Border heritage – The Tweed