The Borders is the bit of Scotland that many tourists flash past en route to Glasgow, Edinburgh and the Highlands and islands.
Which is good news for those of us who love the hills, the emptiness and the landscape of the great ballads, especially Yarrow in whose dowie dens a passionate man was cruelly done to death by nine men jealous of his success with a local maiden.
And just outside Innerleithen lies Traquair, once owned by Scotland's kings and now the oldest continuously inhabited castle in Scotland. Dating from 1107, it remains in private hands and has the kind of homely feel often lacking in houses taken over by national trusts, whether Scottish, English or Welsh.
The house has great stories to tell: its family has always supported the Stuarts and will not reopen the great Bear gates until another Stuart monarch is on the throne; this could take some time.
It has a maze, a tearoom with excellent cakes, and its own brewery, which turns out potent Jacobite ale. It also, and this is the unique selling point, has rooms to let: three of them, large, atmospheric and just faded enough to be interesting.
It was the ideal place to celebrate the significant birthday of a romantic prone to sing herself songs about both Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Flowers of the Forest, the Scots nobles slain by the perfidious English at Flodden.
The two-night stay was a surprise: she thought she had been booked into Mrs McTavish's Bide-a-Wee guest house (without en suites) in nearby Peebles and knew nothing till we rolled up at the big front door.
We climbed stone stairs to the pink room, with its canopy bed and enough space to sleep all nine of the ballad's villains, plus their friends and relations. The windows looked up the lawn to those firmly-locked Bear gates.
The bathroom was big enough for a laird or two and the plumbing creaked atmospherically.
A separate sitting room is made available to guests and a full Scottish breakfast (we had the scrambled egg and smoked salmon) is served in the elegant Still Room. After polishing off the last slice of toasts, guests are free to wander through the rambling public rooms of the house before other visitors arrive.
During a two-day visit, we slogged halfway up the three-peaked Eildon hills and then flopped down in a field in the sun. We did not return to Robert Smail's printing works in Innerleithen (National Trust for Scotland; every stone imbued with the smell of a jobbing printer's inky life) but did go to Sir Walter Scott's Abbotsford (very baronial) for the first time.
And back at Traquair, we found our way into the maze and out again.
· A double room at Traquair costs £180 a night. 01896 830323, www.traquair.co.uk
