EVERYONE has their own style when handling the Queen's baton.

A few children at Greenyards rugby ground in Melrose had told baton bearer Jane Sargent they would like to give the baton a high five.

So, in the interests of delivering what they wanted, on taking the baton from David Tawse, Jane strode off towards the hoardings at the side and held out the baton to the field of small outstretched hands, all of which were curious to feel how big and heavy it was - and also to discover that it seemed to have a letter tucked inside.

Her style of baton carrying was a sharing one. In a most modest way, it had a touch of the queenly handshake to it. But in the course of yesterday, as the baton passed through the Borders, from Duns to Hawick, it was possible to see a great many different baton approaches.

"I suppose I expected the baton to be quite heavy but it really is," said Jane, who was nominated as a baton bearer for her work as an outdoor activities coach. "Especially when you've got a crowd of children trying to pull it out of your hand."

One of the good things about offering it up to the children, she said, was it made the moment stretch out. She wasn't alone in taking her time and savouring it. As the baton made its way yesterday, it appeared many bearers, did not want to rush the experience.

Some were taking it slowly, trying to stretch it out. In the baking heat there was more ambling than running, though at Tweedbank sports centre, pumped up by an energetic commentator, almost everyone seemed to be running, from local schoolkids brandishing flags to the baton bearers themselves. And at Glentress the baton took a spin on two wheels up the mountain bike track.

But the feeling, mostly, was laidback. Onlookers sat out in the street on deck chairs. Support teams of enthusiastic families and friends hung out at the outdoor tables of the Abbey coffee shop. If the baton relay presents a portrait of a community, then the Borders is a very connected and appreciative one, made up of people working hard doing big things and not making a big song and dance about it.

The chain at almost any point is impressive: Jane took the baton from David, a community activist from Peebles, who took it from Kirsteen Mackenzie, a Brown Owl who has taken groups of Guides and Brownies on everything from local camping expeditions to international trips.

She gave it to Sandra Watt, a former Commonwealth athlete who won bronze for Badminton in 2002, who then handed it to Pauline Grigor, a former Olympic torchbearer who set up BANG, a charity for children with additional needs.

But there were others too, like Ross Falconer, now 14, who was the youngest person to have had a pace-maker fitted when he was just a five-day-old baby. Some were there for what they did for the community, others more for the love of sport itself, but many seemed to have a common feeling about the baton.

Abbi Blackie, junior judo champion, summed it up well: "It was so amazing and it was such a rush carrying the baton, especially coming down into this. I was just thinking of the hundreds of thousands of people that touched this before me.

"It was such an honour to be picked, and to think this has come thousands and thousands of miles and I've added to its journey, and I've done it here, in this place, near where I first started judo just up in the little hall in Darnoch."

The Borders is also an area, as one baton bearer said, that is "sports mad". A little further down the road at Tweedbank, Richard Kenney, walked on to the track holding the baton in one hand and a crutch in the other, since he's only just recovering from a hip operation.

He's been involved in Judo for 53 years and worked at five different Commonwealth Games, his first as a judo coach in 1986, when it was a demonstration sport. Kenny has lived in Motherwell and Greenock, and said of the Borders: "They're all obsessed with sports here - and it's not just rugby."