The house and the tour are fun. We genuinely enjoyed it. The cafe is quite expensive but the staff are lovely and the food is nice. The view of the house and grounds form the cafe is worth the visit. The 2 stars we deducted are about the parking. The management helped us resolve our parking charge, for which we are very grateful. But it is an unpleasant and stressful addition to the visit to receive a £100 parking charge having paid for parking. If they stop doing business with parking eye we would love to return

We arrived on a sunny day and the house and gardens looked stunning. We especially enjoyed walking in the gardens and by the river. We went around the house which is quirky as full of strange items collected by Sir Walter Scott. We were lent a brief guide by the volunteer in the entrance hall but would have liked more information and would have liked to be able to talk to a volunteer in each room. The house was deserted as we walked around it. We were disappointed by the food in the cafe.

This is a highly commercialised place, £2.00 to park and at £14.00 for seven rooms (no concessions for the aged) it’s a tad on the expensive side vis a vis other local places. Perhaps they are still trying to pay off Scott’s £10 million debt! Yes, I know it includes the gardens but, in all honesty, the only thing of interest there are the Roman plaques Scott ‘acquired’ (pinched?) from a Roman fort. I guess it’s a fine place to spend an hour or less when it’s raining or if you are a Scott devotee.

We enjoyed our visit and the house is very interesting with an audio guide, and all the staff are very friendly and helpful. The house is definitely worth visiting. There is an additional car parking charge of £2 which was disappointing upon arriving. The gardens near the house are nice but not especially extensive (there are further woodland walks). There’s a very expensive gift shop.

One of the better audio tours we took on the Borders Abbey Way hike. We really stopped here for the restaurant; I had super-food salad as well as some fish and chips and both were good. The tour was a little slow but educational. Wish we could have gone upstairs however.