My aging body is learning about hills since moving to the Scottish Borders last year from the seriously flat fenlands of Cambridgeshire. There’s a street in our nearest town, Berwick-upon-Tweed, that appears to me as though it has a 45 degree incline but I don’t know how you would measure it.1
The first time I climbed West Street, although I attempted it slowly, I suffered from leg cramps for a whole day afterwards. The narrow cobbled road, architecturally interesting for its close-packed houses dating back centuries, leads from Bridge Street at the bottom where the River Tweed meets the sea, to the market place on Marygate at the top. It has become clear that I need to up my game and build some leg strength!
Hills, of course, are impressive features in the landscape, they make for some stunning scenery, and the Scottish Borders is an area renowned for its natural beauty. At the end of our garden there’s a view of the Cheviot Hills and, The Cheviot, approximately 30 miles distant, is the highest of several peaks; its an extinct volcano, clear to see as such, and it’s 2,674 feet above sea-level. Online research tells me that anything over 2000 feet can be called a mountain. Some evenings, then, when I walk down between the trees and look south over the fields, I stare at rolling hills, mountains… and a volcano.
The Cheviot Hills are a geological divide—’a discrete tectonic block with a distinct geological history that spans almost 500 million years’.2 They geographically straddle the Scotland-England border with many peaks and lowland areas situated in Northumberland’s National Park.
I’m not a mountain climber. Never have been. Almost certainly never will be. But I’d like to gain sufficient fitness to enjoy my surroundings. One day I hope to explore some of these hills, to take a sensible walking route and enjoy their rugged splendour from the inside. For now, I have the romance of admiring these hills from a distance, hills I see from the Scottish side of the border.
Looking at flattened satellite images, The Cheviot is a spot in what could be described as a nicely crisped pancake; it’s surrounded by other spots denoting high mountainous places: Preston Hill, Broadhope Hill, Blackseat Hill, Scald Hill, Hedgehope Hill, Comb Fell, Cairn Hill, Hangingstone Hill, Birnie Brae, The Schil, Coldburn Hill. In the naming, there’s a defiant emphasis on ‘hill’ and I wonder if this is because in Scotland there are many other places, much higher, steeper, more rugged and dangerous to climb. Further north, The Grampian Mountains, for instance, accommodate Ben Nevis which, at 4413 feet, is the tallest mountain in the UK.
But back to The Cheviots. At times they’re shrowded by the mist that comes off the North Sea, locally known as the ‘haar’. At other times, when the humidity is low and there’s no haze, they silhouette on the horizon, a sharp line of contrast between land and sky. Like other mountain ranges this is an ancient landscape of treacherous ravines and waterfalls, soaring peaks and often bleak weather. Here, though, it seems from the Neolithic stone circles and Iron Age forts, that people have occupied the land for at least 7,000 years—valleys have offered protected spaces for tough souls to live and work. The map’s widening contours in shades of green cradle towns and villages with place names that hold history in their fists, and tell stories of peace and bloody territorial wars: Millfield, Wooler, Lowborn, Whittingham, Netherton, Rothbury, Harbottle, Rochester, Byrness, Oxnam, Jedburgh, Morebattle, Kelso, Coldstream, Branxton.
It gets fairly windy at ground level where we live and I can only imagine the forces that gust along and through the peaks. The Cheviot was once a much higher mountain but over millions of years erosion has blunted its point. The gradient incline is described in many a hiking blog as being ‘steep’. It must surely be as steep as West Street. Once at the top, I understand there’s a flat-ish area of around half a square kilometre, (which roughly equates to 93 American football fields or 70 English soccer pitches), and the hard core is covered by several feet of peat.
I can vicariously enjoy the cool fresh air of The Cheviots, search out the best of the magnificent views from the top, feel the surge of adrenaline at having achieved a difficult climb—all through reading Ronald Turnbull’s substack About Mountains. Ronald is a mountain climber extraordinaire, with experience of many different ranges, in all types of weather and he writes eloquently about his adventures.
Ronald and I have been corresponding for a while now—we bonded over our passion for Place Writing. We decided to each write about The Cheviots from our own point of view and prior to publishing our posts we shared our drafts. This is what Ronald said:
Yasmin’s writing here makes me aware of the different ways there are of inhabiting a single piece of hill country. Mine is of passing through, or even over – often at rather high speed, sometimes in running shoes – from summit to summit along the high grass and the bog cotton swamps. It’s the travel style that puts me in sympathy with the Border Reivers, crossing the range under an autumn full moon and back at daybreak with the stolen cows. But maybe not so much so with the Christian saints like Ninian and Cuthbert, on their way to Iona or building their small brownstone cells among the foothills.
So an enlightenment here, to see the more rounded way – and yes, the Cheviots, as hills, are about as rounded as they come…. Yasmin, though a relative newcomer to the Borders (certainly if compared with, say, Hobbie Noble who raided against Newcastle in 1599) has lived among them through all seasons, and in awareness through the whole of their history and geology.
As for me, over three separate guidebooks, on occasion covering also the hill settlements of the Iron Age, the banks of the Teviot that might have run as the heartstream of a proposed national park, Flodden field where the flower of Scotland went down in the mud. Still, I think I’ll carry on in my peat stained way, along the stone slabs of the Border Ridge, the swampy top of the Cheviot itself, and the wonderful Hen Hole where the peregrines fly out overhead and the way threads through hidden waterfalls.
My Cheviots, Yasmin’s Cheviots, Hobbie Noble’s Cheviots, the Cheviots of that flying peregrine falcon: just how many there are of one little hill range in the great complicated world of ours.
Credits, Notes & Links
Image above: ‘The Cheviot seen from Windy Gyle’ by Ronald Turnbull.
Now hop over to see what Ronald wrote about The Cheviots in his companion post, ‘Crossing the Cheviots.’
Ronald tells me that he’s looked at a mapping app and West Street from the old bridge rises 13m in 200m, which would be a slope of 4°. Good to know, especially for those who relish this type of detail.
From Geology North website.
It's a joy to be able to look out on the same hill every day and judge the weather and one's own mood by how it appears to you.
Very nice to visit The Cheviots again through your writing, Yasmin.