2025 saw another successful year at the Allanton Inn. No major changes just a steady year of business. Our room bookings pretty much fully booked again from May through to November and the restaurant and bar still very popular all year round with all our lovely local clientele.
The biggest changes came for us personally as our youngest left home and we finally became empty nesters! This coincided with us celebrating
25 years of being hospitality entrepreneurs. It has been a quite a journey setting up, working four hospitality/tourism businesses over these 25 years while raising our 3 boys, so we are looking forward to enjoying more time for ourselves going forward and dreaming of the far-flungtravel we could do!
In 2025 we did manage a few foodie adventures & exploration,all in the name of business research for Borderland Food Tours of course!
The year started with a short trip toIceland in January with my sister Kerry from Sweet Red Balls to visitFrioheimar. She is expanding her tourism offering at their Tomato Glasshouse near Hawick so was intrigued to see these large glasshouses in Iceland fuelled by the thermals and see what they offer their visitors. It was fascinating and a
fantastically informative trip. Iceland is a brilliant place to visit although Im not sure I would recommend the fermented shark or Brennivin. But how about the Dung SmokedSalmon or Puffin Crumpet or Grilled Fin Whale?
Trips to enjoy Italian cuisine in 2025 included our family holiday skiing in the Italian Alps where William & I took ourselves of to Turin for a day of Italian feasting and then in October I completed a learning journey to Tuscany with Scottish Agritourism. Tuscany is beautiful, full of vineyards of course, but I learnt a lot about tourism experiences on the many Agritourism Farms we visited.
An old friend’s wedding in Dublin in September saw us enjoy a few Guinness’s, Oysters &Irish Stews then for a little holiday ourselves we headed to Morocco in November. The Moroccan tastes still linger in my mouth. Mint Tea, tagines, the pastries, the snails, slow cooked lamb, I could go on and on. We did a food tour of the souks with a local guide so got a real flavour and understanding of Moroccan food. Morocco was quite literally a melting pot of flavours, culture & history.
Along side all our travels we have been refining our Borderland Food Tour products and in Spring 2025 we started topromote our Walking Food Tour of Berwick-upon-Tweed. With the plans for Destination Tweed’s River Tweed Trail launching in 2028 we felt it a priority to get ourselves established in Berwick early as a food experience for the increase in visitors who will be coming to Berwick. The River Tweed Trail will bring more visitors to the Scottish Borders which is exciting news. Summer 2025 was a good start for Borderland Food Tours with a few tours notched up.
Other big tourism news for the Scottish Borders & Scotland as a whole, is that the first Scottish CenterParcs will open in the Scottish Border near Hawick/Selkirk. This is fantastic news and it will help in putting the Scottish Borders on the map as a region and place to visit. As CenterParcsguests drive through the scenic countryside to get to the park hopefully, they will be impressed by the beautiful rolling countryside, our history, our people & our food and want come back and explore some more.
Celebrating where our food comes from and connecting it back to source has always been our passion at the Allanton Inn. In February we visited the lambing sheds of Whiteadder Lamb. Later in the year and through the winter months now, we serve this lamb on our menus. We continue to nurture our relationships with our local suppliers and showcase as much local produce as we can. Only this morning after an emergency ice cream order last night and question to Giacopazzi’s Gelato as to whether they have an Iron BruSorbet does the fantastic Somers
Giacopazzis rustle up a tub for me and deliver it along! What amazing suppliers we are lucky to have!
In March we were finalists at the Scottish Countryside Alliance Awards aka Rural Oscars for Best Pub. We didn’t win this one but have been shortlisted again this year for Best Local Food & Drink so fingers crossed we get a win this year.
I was also winner of the South of Scotland Thistle Awards Tourism Individual of the Year. This is quite an honour, and I was at the National final in Glasgow in November with some seriously big hitters in my category.
I was over the moon to win for the South of Scotland but out my depth at the National Awards!!
On the 1st of May we started our 2025 Pizza Service and had a bumper year of summer weather and also pizzas sales. The pizza shack was open for four months of pizza service over the summer and we served around 1500 pizzas in our fabulous beer garden.
It wasn’t just pizzas being enjoyed in the beer garden. We had a busy summer servinglots of lunches & dinners with many local St Abbs lobsters, local estate venison burgers and our all-time best seller – Beer
Battered Haddock & Chips. There has also been Baby Showers, Funeral Wakes, Corporate Events & many Birthday Parties and we hosted a wedding for a local couple in August. Completed with a few Orcadian traditions some of the Orcadian guests undertook.
In June, the Jim Clark Trust celebrated 60th anniversary of World
Champion Racing Driver Jim Clark at Duns Castle. It was a hot weekend, perfect for this magnificent occasion and we enjoyed hosting our Jim Clark fans who had travelled from all over the World to celebrate the weekend.
The autumn has passed in a blink of an eye as we were so busy with one thing and another, and Christmas arrived so fast! We had a great
December with the usual boozy Christmas Menu plus there was the Duns Rugby ClubFestive Tractor Run where we hosted JD Smokehouse for some roadsidesmoked treats. Our community Christmas Carols by Candlelight was well received and demands for it to be repeated this year have been acknowledged.
We still have for the most part the same team as 2024. The kitchen & housekeeping teams remains unchanged. There are a few fresh faces front of house – Marie, Abigail, Evie but Dave & Rachel are still with us. Our fantastic hard-working team ensure our business goes from strength to strength and they always endeavour to deliver our renowned best Borders hospitality.
We are also fortunate to be so well supported by our community. The Community Council are indeed meeting in the pub this evening to host their monthly meeting with this years Jim Clark Rally discussions taking place too.
A pub is a hub in any community but especially ours where we are the only open-door business. We treasure our public house heritage and place in our community. Times are particularly hard for hospitality right now with so many rising costs and spend decreasing but we weather the storm as we have many others by doing what we do best, supporting local.
So lets be having you 2026. Lots to look forward too. But first we need a rest and are enjoying a slower pace of life in these quieter weeks. It is quite refreshing having some time in January to catch up with admin too!