In 1787 Robert Burns made a tour of the Borders, setting out from Edinburgh on 5 May. His first stop was the farm of Berrywell, outside Duns, where he stayed with the Ainslie family.
During his tour he kept a regular journal, in which he recorded his impressions of the places he visited and the people he met.
The extracts from Robert Burns’ journal quoted here are taken from Robert Burns’s Tour of the Borders 5 May-1 June 1787 by Raymond Lamont Brown, The Boydell Press, Ipswich (1972).