Cheviot Seasons

The historian G. M. Trevelyan, a native of Wallington, wrote: "in Northumberland alone, both heaven and earth are seen. We walk all day on long ridges, high enough to give far views of moor and valley and the sense of solitude far below. It is the land of far horizons. Up above here on the moor, the silent sheep browse all day long, filling the mind with thoughts of peace and safety. Northumberland throws over us, not a melancholy, but a meditative spell."

It is this feeling of peace and safety, and no doubt a measure of Trevelyan's meditative spell, which draws the walker, naturalist and visitor alike, again and again to the Cheviot Hills. Once neighbours of mine, now living in Australia, sit on their Sydney veranda and remember days spent in the hills; many people have favourite places amongst the hills which draw them back, always satisfying, never disappointing. And if you stand on any point along the Simonside ridge and cast your view northwards, the horizon is filled with the Cheviot Hills, rising in green waves to the Cheviot ridge, where the English and Scots made a boundary they fought over for eight centuries.

The Cheviot Hills seen from Carter Bar
The Cheviot in snow
The River Coquet in spate after the thaw
'Green waves rising to the Cheviot ridge'
A ewe and her lamb on Yardhope Moor