Prehistory & Ancient Borders · Galashiels & Innerleithen
Wallace’s Trench and the Catrail: A Line Across the Border Hills
Mark follows the earthwork known as Wallace’s Trench in the hills between Galashiels and Innerleithen, asking what its name and the Catrail can tell us.
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Watch Mark Nicol’s original film, first published on YouTube on 5 November 2025. Load the film below to play it here.
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Privacy & cookiesHigh between Galashiels and Innerleithen, a long mark runs through the ground. It can be easy to miss from a distance. Once you stand near it, the trench asks an irresistible question: who made this line, and why?
Mark goes in search of the earthwork known locally as Wallace's Trench and considers its relationship to the Catrail. The name brings William Wallace into the landscape, but a traditional name is not proof that Wallace and his men dug or occupied it. The physical line and the stories attached to it deserve to be explored on their own terms.
Where landscape meets legend
The Catrail is a complex of linear earthworks running through parts of the Borders. Its course and purpose have been debated, and a single stretch cannot tell us the whole story. What Mark's film can show is the scale of the cut in the land and how readily an old feature becomes part of a later local memory.
Follow the question further in Walking the Whispering Line and Cauldshiels Hill Fort and the Catrail. They put this encounter beside other traces of the region's early defences.
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