About Mark
A lifelong passion for the Borderlands, shared one story at a time.
Mark Nicol is the guide, researcher and film-maker behind Discover Scottish Borders — an independent history, heritage and storytelling platform spanning a website, blog, video archive and social-media presence. It began in 2012 and now includes 300 researched videos about the region’s history, folklore and places.
Your guide
Mark Nicol
Guide · film-maker · Borderlands storyteller
The project at a glance
The landscape is part of the conversation.
Why Mark?
The details are where a place begins to feel alive.
Mark’s tours are built around the connection between people and place. A tower becomes more than a ruin; a road becomes a route through family memory; a view opens onto the forces that shaped the Borderlands.
His work as a film-maker and guide brings an infectious passion to the history, landscapes and living traditions of the region. It also brings an eye for the small visual details — the line of a road, the way a tower sits against the hill, the traces that are easy to miss from a car window.
You do not need to arrive with a finished family tree or a specialist knowledge of Scottish history. Curiosity is enough; the route and the level of detail can grow from there.
Mark has had a passion for the Scottish Borders throughout his life. In 2012, he began developing Discover Scottish Borders to document the region’s remarkable places and the stories attached to them — from timeless remnants dating back more than a millennium to the less obvious traces that can still be found in an ordinary-looking field or roadside. What began as personal exploration has grown into an independent history, heritage and storytelling platform spanning a website, blog, video archive and social-media presence.
That wider platform now brings together 300 researched videos. Mark follows tips, leads, passages in books and familiar historical stories, then researches, scouts and presents each subject in his own way. The result is a growing collection that brings the history and folklore of the Borderlands to life, including stories that might otherwise be forgotten.
Mark is the driving force behind Discover Scottish Borders. He researches the subject, finds the right locations, works out how the story fits into the wider landscape and presents it with an informative style that still leaves room for his personality. All of this has been built in his free time and on his days off.
The aim has always been to help people see the Borders for themselves — not simply to tell them that these places matter.
From film to fieldwork
A project that helps people move from watching a place to visiting it.
Discover Scottish Borders is growing all the time and becoming a hub for information about the region. The films are there to inform and entertain, but they are also intended to encourage people to get out, follow the route and experience the places in person.
Born in the Borders
Mark takes carefully selected visitors into the region who want to explore the Borderlands and see the delights of the area for themselves. The tours start from a personal knowledge of the roads, places and stories that make this region distinctive — and from knowing when a detour is worth taking.
Stories brought to life
Mark’s film-making gives the tours another way to explore the history before or after you travel, with a strong sense of atmosphere and place.
A conversation, not a script
Questions are welcome. The route can slow down when a story catches your attention, and explanations can go deeper when you want to follow the evidence.
How it began
It started with an exploration and a sense of fun.
In the beginning, Mark’s videos were a way of documenting his own explorations of the local region. He filmed the places he was discovering, added a little fun and let the content reflect his personality. It was informal, curious and rooted in the simple pleasure of going out to see what was there.
As the Borders Railway neared completion, the project took a more focused turn. Mark began researching the tourist potential of Galashiels and Tweedbank, thinking about what visitors stepping off the train could explore for themselves. This led to a series of films about walks, local places and things to see in and around the towns.
The response created a new momentum. A larger audience brought more questions, and those questions gave Mark a thirst to investigate the history and folklore of the region in greater depth. The project grew from documenting a day out into tracing the stories behind the landscape.
The Discover Scottish Borders platform now brings together 300 researched videos, each with its own story to tell. The audience reaches far beyond the region — including viewers in the USA, Canada, Australia and South Africa who feel a connection to the Borders through earlier generations and family ancestry.
Leaving a wider footprint
The story becomes stronger when more people add to it.
Discover Scottish Borders has also been a forerunner in encouraging bloggers and YouTubers to create their own content when they visit a site or explore part of the region. Their experiences add another layer of information, helping future visitors find the places, understand what they are seeing and make their own discoveries.
Mark has also appeared in a BBC regional broadcast with his own segment telling the story of the Border Reivers. He is in demand as a speaker at local community groups, where he shares the self-taught knowledge built through years of research and filming.
The guiding principle
Come for the places. Leave with the stories.
Whether you find Discover Scottish Borders through a film, a family connection, a community talk or a tour, the purpose is the same: to make the region’s history easier to see, understand and experience.
The correspondence the project receives is one measure of that interest: questions about a family name, a forgotten site or a local tradition often lead to the next piece of research.
Recognition
2018
Finalist for the VisitScotland Scottish Thistle Award as Regional Ambassador.
A milestone worth mentioning
A regional project recognised on the Scottish tourism stage.
In 2018, Mark was a finalist for the VisitScotland Scottish Thistle Award as Regional Ambassador — an award often described as the Oscars of Scottish tourism. It recognised the work of putting the Scottish Borders in front of a wider audience and encouraging people to take an interest in the region.
More from Mark
Explore the stories beyond the tour.
The tour site is for planning your day in the Borders. Mark’s wider history, heritage and storytelling work — including his website, blog, videos and social-media updates — lives on the main Discover Scottish Borders platform.