Dense fog in morning which continued till after 1. … Breakfasted at 7 + left at 8 cycling to St Boswells1, Makerstoun, Kelso, Proctor’s Smithy, Pressen, Learmouth, Mindrum, Paxton, Yetholm, Ledford, Ancrum [and] Kelso getting home at 5.20. The fog was very dense from St Boswells + the hoar frost melting off the trees about Makerstoun was quite wetting. After Proctor’s Smithy the sun shone out + I sat on a stone difot [?] + read the Scotsman. Before Preddon I ran into fog again but from Mindrum the sun came through. I lunched between Paston + Yetholm + rain home from there – over 30 miles in 3 ¼ hours and the [whole] run was 66.4 miles. Helen + Nancy2 went to an anti-prohibition3 meeting at the Victoria Hall.
1 Proctor’s Mill, NT745317, Pressen, NT836358, Pawston ? NT849336 – centred on – Pawston [doesn’t look right but at NT855327; Learmouth – East Learmouth shown NT862374
2 Helen Frances ‘Mousey’ Muir (1880-1963) and Agnes Amelia ‘Nancy’ Roberts née Muir (1878-1948), two of Dr Muir’s daughters
3 Low level pressure to abolish alcohol had rumbled on from the First World War and into the 1920s. Scotland was probably the place in which it gained the greatest traction and indeed Edwin Scrymgeour who served as M.P. for Dundee, 1922-1931, is the only person to have been elected to the House of Commons on a prohibitionist ticket. On a more practical level there was state control (the ‘State Management Scheme’) which nationalised production, distribution and sale of alcoholic drink from 1916 at Enfield, Cromarty and Carlisle/Gretna – the most celebrated of which was the Carlisle Management Scheme which continued until the 1970s and has a small museum at Cakes & Ale bookshop/café at Castle Street, Carlisle, CA3 8SY
[Source: Scottish Borders Archives & Local History Service SBA/657/23, Dr J S Muir of Selkirk, medical practitioner, journal for 1920]
Rumbling Clint's Scottish Notes 