Friday 28th July 2023

For a change, we weren’t going after work on a Friday, instead, we were on the road by 9am heading through to Edinburgh.

The roads were quiet, and we found our way to the Royal Highland Centre, near Edinburgh Airport.

We could’ve stayed on site for the weekend, but we’d been to the two previous Love Touring Expos in Aberdeen, and so…weren’t sure what to expect.

From what we could see it looked good, some comments on the Facebook group suggest that it wasn’t perfect, but hopefully the organisers will learn from it.

As to the show, it was “fine”, this is the first time they’ve run LoveTouring in the Central Belt, the first year we were there was late 2021, while we were still looking for a van, and it felt worth driving up to Aberdeen.

We were there in late October 2022, and honestly, it wasn’t so good, yes, dealers were struggling with all stock, but it wasn’t a great experience, and the highlight of the trip was staying at Stonehaven.

The Edinburgh event was better than October 2022, but still wasn’t as good as the SEC or NEC events, two standouts were the Orange Campers vehicles, they had a very nice “Orange Glow” Ford Transit Custom based van, which definitely looked very nice, but the real highlight was their 5m Peugeot Boxer campervan, very nice and roomy inside, and with a pop-top!

Definitely looked like a great van, and we are still tempted by this.

There weren’t a huge number of vehicles at the event, and we chatted to the mobile Hab checkers and a local (to us) vehicle servicer which was very handy.

After a quick lunch we did a spot of shopping, and then headed off down the A68 to Jedburgh.

Arriving on site, we got directed to our pitch, and headed for a wander into Jedburgh.

It’s a beautiful little town, and it was nice and sunny, so we got to see the honey blonde sandstone at its best.

We popped into the Canon Bar and relaxed with a couple of beers, it wasn’t busy, and was pretty good value, no food tho’, so we wandered round to Belter’s Bar.

They lay claim to “the best burgers in the Borders”, and without having visited every burger place in the Borders, I can definitely say they must be up there.

I opted for the Scottie Burger, with haggis, one of the nice things I liked is that you pick your sides, I opted for slaw and creamy cheesy chips, Gayle opted for their Classic Burger.

It might not look like much from outside, and it’s definitely quite dated inside, but the food was great.

While we had burgers, the rest of the menu looked pretty good too.

We wandered back to the van, and Gayle was asleep by 8:30pm.

Saturday, we were up early had a pot of porridge, and headed off for a walk towards Monteviot Gardens, it’s a really nice walk along part of the “Borders Abbeys Way”, and then “St Cuthbert’s Way”.

The weather remained dry, and we popped in to “Out-There Artisan” for lunch, really enjoyed their flat bread “Plougmans”.

We headed back the way we came, in the sun, and back to the van, shortly after that, it was pretty heavy rain, so my plans to cook outside changed a bit.

We wandered into town, and picked up some bits and pieces, and prepared a cheese and onion pie in the Omnia, onions fried up in the Ridgemonkey, mash from a packet, and plenty of grated smoked cheese that we bought on a previous trip.

It was very tasty, the potato could’ve had a better texture (so we will use real potatoes next time), but it came out of the Omnia easily, and it tasted great!

A wee Loch Lomond IPA finished off the night, and we settled down to relax and watch a wee bit of TV.

Up late on Sunday, but we were heading back to see family, so..left the site quite early

Did we do everything we wanted in Jedburgh? No…so, we’ll be back, and would definitely go back to the site.