Saturday night in Berwick-upon-Tweed
Berwick-upon-Tweed
A very dead and flattened squirrel lies across the cycle path, its pink innards twisting across the path. It is late afternoon on an early autumn day as I ride into town. All the inns and hotels are full, according to the App on my phone. But I’m tired and the light is fading. I ride and push my bike from one hotel door to the next. ‘Sorry Sir, we are full tonight’, they chorus.
I ride up Hide Street, a main thoroughfare which climbs a short hill. Lining it are heavy buildings housing banks, hotels and Winebars. Timpsons, Amran’s Kitchen and Grill, Limoncello an Italian restaurant, Building Societies and Banks, an Estate Agent. Cars are parked in diagonal bays on each side of the road. Three separate groups of young stand around, each clutching a can of drink. Each group watch me as I ride past. Their gaze passes like a relay baton from one group to the next. The girls wear skirts which barely reach the top of their thighs, the young men are heavily tattooed, their hair cropped or gelled, and they’re uniformed in white and precisely ironed T-shirts. Cars with home-adjusted high performance engines roar up the hill past me, windows down and a deep vibrating beat booms from their sound systems. Their exhausts thrum, engines scream, tyres screech. The Indian is doing a big trade in take-away curries.
Places of violence and dispute, border towns have that renegade lawless feeling the world over. Towns full of soldiers, smugglers and competing ideologies. Rough, far from the centres of power, disputatious, they are delightfully uncomfortable. Berwick-upon-Tweed is no different to Ciudad Juarez or Chiasso, or Peshawar. It has that feel. Drugs, drink, contraband. In the evening light it has a soft charm. Red roofs, solid walls, the sea. The September light hides the damp of algae rich courtyards. Plaster and paint peels from edifices and walls.
I try the King’s Arms Hotel. Founded in 1782, still independently run, it was from 1785 a stage-coach inn serving the London - Edinburgh route. 'The ‘High Flyer’ left daily for both capitals pulled by four horses. A framed note on the lobby wall states that the cellar is reputed to be the grave of James 1 of Scotland. Other notices hang on walls;
‘A full list of charges for breakages and theft -
Windows - £100 for each pane
Pictures - £80
Toilet Tray - £12
Guests will be held liable for all soiled laundry (blood, vomit, faeces)’
The man at the desk explains without emotion that it’s Saturday night - the young come to town for a good time, he says. He has one room left.
Inside the only spare room in town, the basin tap swivels loosely on its pipe, without giving water. A raw smell of drains emanates from the sink hole. The window will not budge, the blinds are broken. The sheets look as they have been used them earlier in the day. A couple of Turks bang with hammers and electric screw-drivers on the stairway, repairing a broken bannister. Electric wires hang from walls.
Where to eat in Berwick?
The town’s choices;
Pizza, Indian, Turkish or Chinese. Fish and Chips.
The light of the early autumn evening seems delicate and breakable as I walk along the town walls looking out to sea. Pools of vomit lie on the footways like dead animals.
It is way past midnight. There’s the sound of breaking glass outside in the street. Loud shouts of ‘fuck’. Running feet. Bottles are thrown and smash on the tarmac. Loud, drunken laughter. A meleé on the corner at the foot of the hill as two groups exchange punches and kicks. Cars race around the town - literally. Two race side by side up Hide hill hoping to be the first to reach the corner into the high street. Others follow, engines straining, sound systems blaring. Muffled noises come from the rooms above, someone trips on the stairs - fucking hell and suppressed laughter follow. Sshhhh. A stifled scream from next door. Rhythmic banging of bedposts against the wall.
Follow the journey on the National Cycle Network, Route 1 (NCN 1) by clicking here.