The Tweed enters from a horseshoe of old hills — Tweedsmuir, Minchmoor, the Lammermuir range — surrounding a bold central basin filled with soft rock and centuries of glacial drift. The river remembers everything that catchment has done to it. East of St Boswells the landscape opens where an ice stream once carved down through the countryside, and that old channel still shapes the Tweed — long meanders on clean cobble and gravel, point bars that shift with the season, and the particular sense of a river that has found perfect room to turn. Tributaries arrive from every quarter: Teviot from the south, Ettrick and Yarrow running parallel from wild moorland, Leader from the gentle east, Till and Whiteadder completing the network. Watch the banks after a falling spate — soft silt drapes collect on the inside of the bends, and that's where the character changes. The wading is secure and the rhythm is kind; the river isn't in any hurry. That's the Tweed's gift: time to think, time to notice, time to fish properly.

Wading: Soft silt drapes on inside bend point bars after falling spates