Where the Borders Still Makes Things: A Weekend of Mills, Studios and Farm Shops

There is a version of Borders shopping that involves a coach party, a shortbread tin and a novelty mug, and it is entirely avoidable. The alternative takes a bit more planning and rewards you with the good stuff: a jumper that will outlive several cars, a paperback chosen by someone who has read it, a bar of chocolate made fifty yards from where you bought it.

The trick is to treat the shops as destinations rather than stops, because that is how the people running them treat them. Most are small, several are family businesses in their fourth or fifth generation, and nearly all of them are nicer to visit on a Wednesday than a Sunday. Here is a route that strings them together sensibly.

Friday: Hawick, where the machines are still running

Start in Hawick, which is the beating heart of Scottish knitwear and stubbornly refuses to stop being so. The town has produced cashmere and lambswool for the best part of two centuries, and while the industry has shrunk, the survivors are serious operations rather than heritage displays.

Begin at the Borders Textile Towerhouse, housed in a former mill in the town centre. It is free, it is small enough not to eat your morning, and it explains the actual process — carding, spinning, linking, washing — so that the prices in the factory shops stop looking arbitrary and start looking reasonable.

After that, work your way round the mill shops and the remaining manufacturers. William Lockie has been making knitwear in Hawick since the 1870s and sells from the town; several other mills operate factory shops with limited hours, and a few are trade-only or by appointment, so ring ahead rather than turning up and pressing your face to the glass. Ask at the Towerhouse for who is currently open — local knowledge beats any list on the internet, including this one.

What to look for: fully fashioned knitwear (pieces knitted to shape rather than cut from a sheet), Scottish-spun yarn, and the word Hawick on the label. What to ignore: anything described only as cashmere-feel.

Saturday morning: Selkirk and the weaving floor

Selkirk is fifteen minutes up the road and still has a working weaving mill you can walk into. Lochcarron of Scotland runs a visitor centre alongside its mill, and the difference between this and a normal shop is that you can see, or at least sense, the machinery doing the work behind the wall. Tartan, tweed, scarves, and a decent range of remnants if you sew.

Go early. Mill shops tend to open at nine or ten and shut promptly at five, and Saturday afternoons can be quiet enough that you feel you are keeping somebody from their lunch.

Pair it with a wander round Selkirk's town square — the town has one of the best statues in the Borders and a genuine sense of itself — and a coffee before heading south-east.

Saturday afternoon: St Boswells and Galashiels

The Mainstreet Trading Company in St Boswells is the sort of place that makes people reconsider their life choices: bookshop at the front, café and deli at the back, staff recommendations that are actually recommendations. It is a proper browse-and-stay-awhile stop, and the deli is where you build tomorrow's picnic.

Then loop back to Galashiels for the Great Tapestry of Scotland, which is not a shop but will put the wool and the weaving into context better than anything written on a label. If you have a spare half hour, the town's charity and second-hand shops are quietly excellent for old china and out-of-print local history.

Sunday: Peebles, slowly

Peebles is the gentle end of the weekend. The High Street is genuinely independent rather than a parade of the same twelve brands, and it has the two things a wet Sunday needs: a bookshop worth an hour and chocolate.

Cocoa Black on the High Street is a chocolatier and chocolate school rolled into one, which means you can buy a box and, if you have booked ahead, learn why the box tastes the way it does. It is a good place to buy the one present you were sent to buy and will now reluctantly hand over.

Add the independent bookshop, a couple of galleries, and a riverside walk along the Tweed to burn off the samples. Peebles is compact enough that you can do the whole thing on foot in three hours and still make an early train home.

Opening hours, etiquette and spending well

• Ring ahead. Small studios and mill shops change hours with the season, and many close on Mondays and Tuesdays. A two-minute phone call saves a wasted detour.
• Go earlier in the week if you can. Saturday is fine; Sunday is often not.
• Ask about seconds and remnants. Many makers sell slightly imperfect pieces or offcuts cheaply, but only if you ask — there is usually a box under the counter.
• Buy the small thing. If you have browsed for forty minutes, bought nothing and used the loo, buy a card. It costs you £3 and costs them nothing but goodwill.
• No haggling. It is not a market. The price reflects the labour and the yarn.
• Check what is genuinely local. Farm shops and delis in the Borders are excellent on cheese, charcuterie, preserves and baking, but not every item on the shelf was made within thirty miles — read the label.

The point of a weekend like this is not to come home with eleven bags. It is to come home with two or three things you will still be using in a decade, and a rough idea of who made them and where.