Hay's Way heads through Gretna Green, the small village on the England-Scotland border where couples, for the last 270 years, have been heading to tie the knot
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00:00 Hello, Catherine Hay, Rural Affairs Correspondent at the Scotsman. I'm currently on a walking
00:06 trip around the country and I've just made it to Gretna Green in Dumfries and Galloway.
00:22 It's very close to the Scottish-English border and the town is known for marriage. In 1754,
00:31 England and Wales passed an act that meant anyone under 21 wasn't allowed to get married
00:38 without the permission of their parents. So this led to lots of couples eloping to Scotland
00:45 to get married where it was easier to have a ceremony supposedly. And the building behind
00:52 me here is known as the famous blacksmith's shop. Apparently this was the first building
00:59 that the couples would get to when they crossed the border. I met a couple coming out of here
01:05 earlier, David and Julie, and they're from Hull. And they talked to me a little bit about
01:12 how the ceremony went and why they chose to celebrate their special day here.
01:17 Why Gretna Green? I suppose I'm Scottish and Julie likes Scotland. A lot of our family
01:24 are in Scotland. It was just us doing it, so we didn't feel any pressure of having to
01:29 look perfect or be perfect or have... Didn't stop us crying all the way through.
01:36 Both of us. Both of us, yeah. I don't know why now. It seems really tough to...
01:47 I was just talking to a member of staff in the cafe here and she said the celebrant,
01:54 sometimes it's one wedding a day, sometimes it can be up to six or seven. So it seems
01:57 to be quite a popular place. The history, the romantic history obviously still has a
02:02 bit of a charm for some people. I can't say it's my cup of tea at all, but yeah, there
02:08 were quite a few people visiting, just walking around, taking photos. There's a lot of sculptures
02:14 representing couples and love around here. And yeah, I was going to catch another couple
02:20 who I thought had just got married, but it turns out they were already married and they
02:24 were just doing a photo shoot to sort of promote Gretna Green, I think, as a wedding venue.
02:30 So they're pushing it as a venue, even for married couples, you can come here and get
02:36 a blessing together. I was reading on a sign earlier. So yeah, if you're married or if
02:41 you're not married, there's plenty of opportunity here.