IN OCTOBER 1938, shortly after declaring that there would be “peace for our time”, Neville Chamberlain repaired to Tweed for some fishing; much-needed respite following the travails of bartering the Munich Agreement. Like so many before him, he echoed the angling bard Izaak Walton’s affirmation that “God never did make a more calm, quiet and innocent recreation than angling.” Chamberlain probably chose Tweed because of its reputation as the finest salmon river in the land. It was an auspicious choice.
For much of its length it acts as the border between England and Scotland, and, more than any other river in the British Isles, has been the site of warring and bloodshed. It spills into the sea at Berwick-upon-Tweed, a town so fought over that it changed hands some 13 times between 1296 and 1482. Sadly, Chamberlain blanked on this trip, and soon thereafter Hitler occupied the rest of the Sudetenland, ending hopes for peace.
Rising among barren hills, about six miles north of Moffat, the start of Tweed’s 100-mile journey to the sea has a modest beginning. The
