But their pictorial pilgrimage to the prosaic - This is Scotland - could well become an authoritative account of their early 21st century homeland.

Gray’s nose for a line is ably accompanied by McCreadie’s eye for the absurd as they marvel at the mundane and cherish the changing, unwashed face of forever Scotland.

Tartan and shortbread have no place in these brutally honest, yet enjoyable, chapters.

Gray is a self-confessed Yorkshireman. He also has a passion for football and prose. His previous books - including Stramash: Tackling Scotland’s Towns and Teams, and Hatters, Railwaymen and Knitters: England’s Football Provinces - have taken him around lowly league grounds from the Cromarty Firth to the Cornish coast.

His other work, Homage to Caledonia: Scotland and the Spanish Civil War, was turned into a two-part television documentary.

For This is Scotland he thankfully ditched the colons and teamed up with award-winning photographer McCredie.

They both live in Leith which, conveniently, is where their journey begins...

“This country is quick and right to celebrate its lochs, hills and glens. Yet we think there is romance too in the run-down town and the battered old pub, and poetry in urban decay.

“It is chips in the rain with your arms around someone you’ve just met and want to kiss, not haggis and forced-dancing with businessmen on Burns Night.” Throughout late 2013 and early 2014, as a nation prepares for its first independence referendum, No-voting Gray and nationalist supporter McCredie wander around Scotland capturing the grimness of Govan, the dread in Dundee and the hail in the Hebrides. By train, bus, boat and car, camera ready and notebook poised, they sought to capture a nation.

They pour pity over pints in Pitlochry, they cower for cover in Cowdenbeath and set sail for the bygone boom towns doon the watter of the Clyde.

And, as with most journeys, they save the best for last...spending a gloomy day in Galashiels where they take further delight at the decadence.

“Gala’s main street has its back turned to the river: this was a weir to live by and not on, water was work not a place for pleasure.

“Perhaps pleasure comes up the road at the rugby or football next door. The round ball pursuit is a less popular one in these parts. Gala Fairydean Rovers must try extra hard. Perhaps that is why, for their main stand, they have a Brutalist experiment. Its edges and triangles speak highly of yesterday’s future and stand out as an act of surrealism against rain and the fresh valley.” As McCredie captures the changing face of Galashiels through the lens, Gray eavesdrops his way around the town centre with a watchful and poetic eye.

“Gala is sprinkled golden with institutions and clout. The Burgh Hall, its Braw Lad on a horse and its war memorial stand steadfast. Burns and Scott look across a road at one another, a steep and encouraging library between. A man in his 20s leaves that library huddling a bale of hardbacks, his something for the weekend.

“Up beyond Tea Street are long rhythmic streets of mill houses and chunky gable ends. 'Ah mind the rows and rows of buses for the workers dropping them off here,’ a lady in a plastic polka dot hood tells us. 'They came from miles around. Even Dalkeith!’ She continues: 'Then there was the electronics. The Americans came in. A future so bright you’ll need sunglasses, they said. Then they closed it all down.’ “Now, the skilled young leave and the unskilled are left to find jobs that don’t exist.” McCredie’s striking images won’t feature on any postcards but these gems do capture the changing face of Galashiels, and of Scotland.

Boarded-up buildings, wood-paneled cafes, 'round the corner smoke-breaks and forgotten shop signs provide a pitch-perfect accompaniment for Gray’s lament of the landscape.

This is Scotland never tries to be clever, until the authors finally sprinkle a desert spoonful of philosophy over the concluding chapter on the Borderlands.

Written in a time when identity and patriotism was being debated across tea tables the nation over, it was perhaps fitting that Gray and McCredie ventured to the frontier in search of a few answers of their own.

“There is no fence, no change in the landscape or red line as on a map. This is the land of nature, and nature cares not a fig for the things man makes like borders.

“There is a gap between the signs declaring 'England’ and 'Scotland’, a no-man’s land. England’s declaration has stone grandeur (although someone has pen-knifed Sheffield onto the St George Cross). Scotland’s is functional and touristic, although it does 'Welcome You’. The countries share a long slither of meadow, a gentle, peaceful garnish on the land.

“Checkpoint Charlie it is not.” This is Scotland, published by Luath Press Ltd, arrived in all good book shops last week and is probably available on the internet as well.