LightNews — News, ranked by scholars

@jamesaithie.bsky.social

Get yourself up the Eildons on the next decent day! Autumn colours are on their way, my favourite time of the year for the outdoors.

September 28, 2026 at 5:29 PM

Dr Pat Witts

@wittspat.bsky.social

Oh, love the Tweed. Spent a week at Gattonside a few years ago, strolling the banks and looking down on it (with the Eildons behind).

September 21, 2026 at 8:35 AM

Sharon McTeir 📚 🐈

@sharonmcteir.bsky.social

It’s so miserable here today that the Eildons are barely visible.

Wheat field, trees and misty hills in the background.

September 2, 2026 at 5:47 PM

Borders Pride Poetry

@borderspridepoetry.bsky.social

Delighted to present the second of our Runner Up poems…

Nae Crowd tae Vanish into by Seb!

“The kind of hope that walks wi shakin hauns.
The kind of courage that says: I am still here, still staunin.
And I am no here alane.”

I. Who’d Hae Thought It?

Borders Pride 2026 – och, who’d hae thought it?
Not the bairn I was.
Not the teenager hiding.
Not the adult still checking the door.
No past version of me could picture this day –
walking open, unhidden, through Galashiels.
No past version of me imagined banners bright as heather,
voices rising where silence used tae stand.
Past me would call it a lie, a trap, a game;
present me still carries that weather in my bones –
aye, but I carry sun there too.

II. No Crowd Tae Vanish Into

I live with the echoes of old days –
the 80s, not gone,
just folded into the haar on the hills.
I live with abandonment, rejection,
the locked door, the lowered voice.
The queer-bashing, the baiting,
the names spat like stones across a close, across a schoolyard, across a toon.
And in the Borders, in the 80s and 90s, there was nae crowd tae vanish into.
A rumour could rin faster than the bus.
A look in the Co-op, a whisper at the bar, a silence at the kirk door –
that could be the whole village passin sentence.
I remember signs on women’s toilets saying no lesbians allowed.
I remember Section 28 – Section 2A here in Scotland –
a law laid like a hand across the mouth
of every teacher who might have said:
you are alright, you are real, you are no alone.
So we learned tae read ourselves in margins, coded words, and glances held a second too long.
I remember friends left tae die from diseases blamed on us for simply being.
I remember HIV and AIDS spoken like punishment, like warning, like proof we deserved the pain.
I remember the papers, the panic, the prayers that sounded more like blame than mercy.
I remember folk dying lonely, and folk living scared tae be touched.
Yet hauns were held anyway. Kettles boiled anyway. Chosen family was made in kitchens, motors, back rooms and borrowed halls.
I remember hope in the 2000s, green as new fields after rain,
only to see it cut back again.
I mind being attacked for who I loved.
In my teens and twenties, I was ordered tae be normal, dress normal, act normal,
towing the line like a single road over moor and moss.
wearing the mask tae stay safe, though I was dying inside.
Telt tae stop being an embarrassment,
tae stop bringing shame tae the family by being who I am.
Told I need tae change my whole name, surname too,
if I wanted tae live visible in my truth.
Made straight, or made quiet,
which is another kind of vanishing, another way tae be buried while breathing.

III. Lanterns

But there were nights when a phone line, open only a couple of evenings a week, felt like a lantern on a black Border road.
And there were days when Edinburgh was oor only freedom –
a place tae disappear and, somehow, be seen.
That took courage.
No the loud kind, always –
sometimes the wee courage of breathing,
of staying,
of keeping one bright ember alive,
cupped in both hands against the wind.
That was courage too:
no just marching when the sun was oot,
but staying alive through the years that tried tae make us disappear.
Courage was keeping your number hidden, your letters folded deep in a drawer.
Courage was takin the last bus hame and hoping naebody guessed where you had been.
Courage was loving quietly in a place where quiet was sometimes how you got by.
When these streets, these villages, these farm roads and market squares were no safe for the likes of us,
we had tae fit in, wear the mask,
let the “aye been” keep us wee, keep us shamed, keep us still.
I could not let Seb exist until my late forties –
and I could not love freely until my late thirties,
even then, saying it safely, loving someone they said I should not.
And still – hope.
Not soft hope. Not easy hope.
The kind of hope that walks wi shakin hauns.
The kind of courage that says: I am still here, still staunin.
And I am no here alane.

IV. Thegither

But look at us now —
gaun doun the High Street,
makin for the Volunteer Hall,
carrying colour through a mill toon
that has seen wool, rain, resilience, and return.
The Tweed keeps moving below the hills –
carrying what was hidden, silvering what survived.
The Eildons stand like three auld witnesses above Melrose.
The ruined abbeys of Melrose, Dryburgh, Kelso and Jedburgh hold their broken arches open tae the sky,
teaching us what is damaged can still be sacred,
what is weathered can still stand, and what stands can still sing.
From Ettrick to Yarrow,
from Peebles to Hawick,
from Selkirk to St Abbs,
the Borders has aye been a place of crossings –
burns crossed, roads crossed, borders crossed, lives crossed.
So let us cross this one thegither.
Let the Cheviot wind carry oor names.
Let the fields, the forestry, the sheep tracks,
the village halls, the market towns and quiet glens ken we are here.
The fight is not over.
The fog still rolls in through politics, law, media, health and fear.
The hate-filled voices are loud just now –
claiming rights over oor truths, oor bodies, oor lives.
Still, we can hold true.
We can be shield and voice, shelter and song.
We can protect, advocate, support and empower one another –
allies and freends, near and far.
We can speak across the valleys.
We can share light across the rural dark.
We can remember there is naething wrong wi us.
There never was.
And on this first Borders Pride,
beneath the wide Border sky,
we do not ask permission tae belong.
The Tweed kens us.
The hills hae heard us.
We belong because we are here – and we are here, thegither.

August 30, 2026 at 6:58 PM

Sharon McTeir 📚 🐈

@sharonmcteir.bsky.social

Had a lovely walk round the fields tonight with my friend and her dog.

August 26, 2026 at 7:29 PM

Dotty

@fizzandnonsense.bsky.social

That's not even the right place for our piggybacking of the folktale. It's 'supposed to be' deep in the Eildons. He's a narna.

August 17, 2026 at 3:29 PM

Sharon McTeir 📚 🐈

@sharonmcteir.bsky.social

The river Tweed & the Eildons today. ☀️

The River Tweed in front of the Eildon Hills.

July 12, 2026 at 8:01 PM

Andrew a9630

@a9630.bsky.social

Summit of The Eildons in Scottish Borders - windy but worth it! #scotland #scotlandoutdoors
youtube.com/shorts/oawBX...

Summit of The Eildons in Scottish Borders - windy but worth it! #scotland #scotlandoutdoors

YouTube video by Andrew a9630

youtube.com

July 4, 2026 at 8:43 AM

Sharon McTeir 📚 🐈

@sharonmcteir.bsky.social

There were pretty cool clouds over the Eildons last night while I was out walking.

June 30, 2026 at 4:27 PM

samphire-hoe.bsky.social

@samphire-hoe.bsky.social

#stcuthbertsway #eildons #melrose #scottishborders #longestday #knackered

June 21, 2026 at 7:28 PM

samphire-hoe.bsky.social

@samphire-hoe.bsky.social

#summersolstice #solstice #eildons #scottishborders

June 21, 2026 at 7:22 PM

Trimontium Trust & Museum

@trimontiumtrust.bsky.social

#SummerSolstice ☀️ Since antiquity, people looked to the sky to mark the seasons. Sites like Ring of Brodgar show sun & moon mattered deeply. Romans gave us solstitium (“sun standing still”). Later folklore kept midsummer fires & stories. Today why not climb the Eildons with a sense of myth & wonder!

Ring of Brodgar, detail of the sun shining through parallel stones

Eildon Hill north aerial view of the summit

June 21, 2026 at 10:50 AM

Sharon McTeir 📚 🐈

@sharonmcteir.bsky.social

Blue skies today in the Borders.

View from my garden towards the Eildons. Blue sky.

May 24, 2026 at 6:38 PM

DJ Meisō 🎧

@djmeiso.bsky.social

Lovely evening.

Yours truly in a white t-shirt, aviators and Speedy Gonzalez cap.

A view of the sun and the Eildon Hills from St Boswells in the Scottish Borders

Another view of the Eildons through a tree.

A random alley in my village and the moon in the sky.

May 24, 2026 at 6:12 PM

samphire-hoe.bsky.social

@samphire-hoe.bsky.social

#eildons #bowden #scottishborders

May 24, 2026 at 6:33 AM

Jamie

@yorkieinyork.bsky.social

Highly recommended walk up and around the Eildon hills from Melrose! ⛰️ Eildon Hill North (404 m) • ⛰️ Eildon Mid Hill (422 m)

#melrose #borders #scotland #kelso #tweed #eildons