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COLIN MARTIN 1st NovemberTo Kelso on a real nostalgia trip - we're to stay in the Old Priory, where I lived (as a very small boy) from 1941 to 1945 and haven't been back to since. A strange feeling - memories flooding back but everything much smaller.

Tuesday 2nd November. Met up with Ö÷²¥´óÐã crew and old Border buddy Alistair Moffat for the recording at Kelso Abbey. We're exploring the vanished medieval town of Roxburgh on the far side of Tweed but this is a good place to start, since three grave slabs dug up at Roxburgh 200 years ago are preserved here. One records a prominent citizen, Joanna Bulloc, who died in 1371. Judging by the size of her grave cover she was quite a little lady.

Her name suggests her forebears originated in Normandy, so the Bullocs must have been one of the French families brought in by King David I to kick-start the economy of this new town in the early 12th century and make Scotland part of a new Europe. Alas, it wasn't to be.

We've moved on to the cliff of Chalkheugh above the , which gives the town its name. On the far side of the river is a wide haugh bounded by Tweed and Teviot, which join at Kelso. This is where Roxburgh once stood, though there's no trace of it today - just a green meadow dotted with sheep. Once it was one of Scotland's most important burghs, and a favourite of the king. But wars, and changing economic circumstances, brought about its decline. By about 1500 there was nothing left.

Roxburgh inspired my interest in archaeology as a boy, though most of my career has been spent investigating historic shipwrecks. But from time to time I've come back to Roxburgh. We did a dig with the Time Team here a few years ago and one of our finds was a scrap of pottery showing a crude but rather jolly human face. This kind of pottery was made in Yorkshire 700-odd years ago, but analysis showed this one was made from local clay. In the dynamic Roxburgh of that era it seems they weren't importing pottery from over the Border, but potters.

ALISTAIR MOFFAT - 3rd November, South Clerk Street, Edinburgh
Last day and back to see Jim to record bits we had missed out or not had time to do. His enthusiasm is wonderful and we talked about modern Scotland and our collective DNA. Then out into the streets to meet David Connolly again and talk about how the richness and variety of our DNA walks Scotland's streets. We were opposite Old College in South Bridge and the students certainly added to the sense of a cosmopolitan society. Scotland's DNA is not fixed and it was cheering and even uplifting to watch its journey into the future.

Last day - and a shame. I really enjoyed working with Amanda and Martin, real professionals and very organised and cool. Not like telly where we get tetchy. A real pleasure. I hope the listeners can sense how much fun and how interesting it was to make this series.

DAVID CONNOLLY 3rd November
Preparing to head to South Clerk Street in Edinburgh for the final recording, I consider the time that has passed since the early Mesolithic settlers some 10,000 years previously, built the first house on the shore of what is now East Lothian.

I live in the countryside between the fertile land on the Lothian plain which once supported the early Neolithic farmers and the upland moors of the Lammermuirs where sheep still graze, just as they did in Medieval times, making the region rich on profits from sheep wool.

I decide to follow an ancient route from the south, and head up to Soutra Hill, where a desolate moor once contained a thriving monastic hospital. The road is possibly an ancient route, but was first cut as a road in the first century AD, when Roman engineers ploughed the military way deep into the land beyond Hadrian's Wall. They brought both the wealth of an empire and the invader's sword, neither survived, but the road did, soon changing its name to Deer Street - (the road to the Early Historic kingdom of Deria) - Soon as I pass through Pathhead and curve down to Ford, the clue is in the name, I am driving along a fine stretch of Roman road again, pointing me arrow straight to Edinburgh beyond. Dalkeith nestles between the two river Esks and it is through this town I follow ancient route. During the mediaeval period, known as the King's highway, leading merchants and knights both north and south, as brutal wars raged and Scotland began to shape itself.

Now on the Old Dalkeith road I pass Little France, which acquired its name from French members of the entourage brought to Scotland by Mary Queen of Scots. Not the first time that continental ideas and people merged with ours.

My car moves through the traffic lights as I turn off onto a broad boulevard, at Minto Street, large villas of the well to do, telling stories of wealth in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, now many turned to hotels and B&Bs, welcoming people into the city for the first time. The Road narrows, and the villas have shops built where once their gardens stood in prim neatness, but here is potential, here is opportunity not to be missed for the sake of a hedge. Then I am into South Clerk Street proper, and the route is like a canyon, hemmed in with tall tenements, with shops selling everything you could imagine and food shops that offer Nepalese, Chinese, Indian, Italian, Lebanese or Turkish, Jamaican and a host of other tastes.

My car stops at the lights and I look around at the people, a mix of races, creeds ages, from lawyers and doctors to students and pensioners, entrepreneurs and beggars, professors and shopkeepers bustle down each side, the whole street is alive.

Soon the dome of the Old College comes into site, and the Royal mile lies just a few more steps away, but here we stop, and talk, of how this road has brought people and ideas for millennium, a two way street that took us out of ourselves and welcomed others in. The heart of the Enlightenment is where the melting pot of Scotland truly arrives. But today as I shake hands with Alistair at the end of the last take, I hear how Scotland's diversity continues, a Polish voice becomes Japanese as we stand on the pavement, then an Indian couple walk by and then the sound of a local, there is English and Scots, Italian and French, it all passes us as I turn to walk to my car, returning to where it all began, 10,000 years past.

The final episode of The Scots; A Genetic Journey is on 23 March