Geoff Holland straddles the Border
THE A68 through Redesdale is the only public road that crosses the lonely Cheviot Hills, and at Carter Bar, where England and Scotland collide, it peaks at 418 metres. The tiny settlement of Byrness lies just over 9 km south of the border and is a great place to start an exploration of the surrounding hills.
This is definitely forestry country, where huge swathes of hillsides are blanketed in a fetching Forestry England green. My plan was to keep outside the forest as much as possible, although inevitably we would be cheek by jowl for some of the time. And that is exactly how the day started, a 0.5km avenue of conifers as far as the
tiny 1793-built Church of St Francis, with its stained glass window commemorating the 67 workers who died during the construction of nearby Catcleugh Reservoir, before a careful crossing of the A68.
I was following the Pennine Way steeply towards my first hill of the day through a pleasant area of mature trees, soon emerging into bright sunlight, the rocky outcrops of Byrness Hill towering in front of me. I pressed on upwards, a bracken-invaded path twisting and turning through a jumble of grey rock, and leading me to the cairn-crowned top of Byrness Hill. Now high above the conifers, the view over Redesdale was impressive with Catcleugh Reservoir beautifully reflecting the crack-of-dawn blue sky.
Vast grasslands stretched out in front of me, a succession of ups and downs, small crags and rocky outcrops here and there on a delightful uphill journey culminating, 90 minutes after starting my walk, on Ravens Pike. A decent 527 metres high and standing nose to nose with the boundary of the Otterburn Army Training Area, the modern walkers’ cairn sits on top of a Bronze Age burial cairn and is a Scheduled Ancient Monument.
The panorama was widescreen, a succession of green rounded hills rolling into the hazy distance and the volcanic heartland of the Cheviot Hills. I listened to the sound of silence interrupted only by a lone skylark; summer was definitely in the ascendancy. This was the highest point of the walk, but with more than 12.5km still to cover, I was off again at pace, duckboards easing me over boggy ground to Ogre Hill and then to the most northerly point of the day and a change of country.
I clambered over the border fence, a sea of Scottish tussocks to endure, the occasional hint of a path but, by and large, a question of just cautiously picking my way through a minefield of lumps and bumps. Names passed in a blur of concentration, The Heart’s
Toe, Greyhound Law and Hawkwillow Fell before the final pull up to the trig pillar on Hungry Law. Then it was time for a change of direction, a tight-rope walk along a thread-thin path, a smattering of young conifers and a couple of deer fences to cross on the way southwards to Echo Crags. Once there, another airy view to soak up before the winding forest track back to the A68. Quite a walk.