I grew up thereabouts (Newcastle actually but only 40 miles from the Border) and our ale styles were closely interlinked as Scottish and Newcastle Breweries were a
transnational 
across the border, as were Vaux / Lorimers.
The Scottish 'bands' of strength were based on the amount of excise paid on a barrel, in shillings and there were, and still are, 60/-, 70/-, 80/- etc.
The beer illustrated above is a good example of an 80/- albeit nuked in the can and a bit darker than I remember the draught version. /Edit:
and as Kook points out above, now brewed in Yorkshire but read on and the connection will become clear! /edit. As a young guy, we drank Newcastle Exhibition and McEwans export as what in the south would be described as a 'best bitter'. They were fairly strong by pom standards, sweetish and distinctly but not overpoweringly hopped. Other good examples at the time were Northern Clubs Federation Special and Vaux Sampson. Now both deceased.
Below that was a band of ales, the 70/-, that tended to be darker, drier and easy drinking with malt dominating. Examples of this were Lorimers Scotch and McEwans Scotch. Not to be confused with whisky, the name was used in NE England to describe the dark 70/- brews and they were very much the working man's matey-matey drink a bit like XXXX gold is over here. A bit of a stand out here is John Smiths bitter which, despite being made in Yorkshire, always struck everybody as being a bog standard Scotch and when Courage merged with Scottish and Newcastle and bought John Smith the brew became quite popular in NE England and it was definitely in the Scotch stable. You should be able to get a can of that over here and it will be a good although not perfect example of what you would be aiming for in a 70/-
When I was living there, 60/- ales were just about extinct although they were still around in Edinburgh. Newcastle Breweries made a sort of 60/- incongruously called IPA but I expect it's long gone, and it tasted very bland and not worth drinking in my opinion at the time. Maybe some Scots on the forum would know more about 60 shillings brews.
Any Belhaven brews you can get hold of would be an excellent guide of course, and the Old Deuchars Brewery has started up again in Edinburgh with the original victorian mash tuns etc so do a search on Deuchars.
edit again: also Kook is perfectly correct in that the 'top' ales in Scotland and Newcastle tended to be pale / golden and not dark, the 70/-s were darker and whilst south of the border were referred to as 'scotch' , north of the border were referred to as 'heavy'.... referring to the colour not the strength. I also do not subscribe to the 'difficulty in obtaining hops due to crippling transport costs' hypothesis. Both Newcastle and the Forth were major coal exporters by ship (Cap'n Cook's Endeavour was a converted collier) and with a thriving trade up and down the coast, EKG could be landed cheaply in Edinburgh and Newcastle as a back load no probs. /edit
Damn it's threads like this that make me want to head down to Flight Centre
