Note: This passage belongs to a commission, “Exploring Rural Realities” by Hexham Book Festival and was published online in 2020.
The forecast has proved right; a clear sky and hard overnight frost. Perfect conditions for climbing The Cheviot. A rim of frost covers everything in a sealed white envelope, each blade of grass and fallen leaf clamped in place. To the west across the fields, the sun is surfacing as an orange dream and trees pick out clear, staccato notes on the skyline. The light is thinned and blue, holding little promise of warmth.
I haven’t been back to the hill since I attempted to climb it two years ago in late December snow. The possibility of returning in clear conditions brings twinges of excitement, not so much about the ascent itself, but the prospect of a whole day ahead in the hills. At 815 metres it is the highest hill in Northumberland and cuts a clear profile in the winter sky this morning. Its great whaleback shape sprawls across the horizon as a cold crown sitting beneath a puffball of pink cloud. It is clear of snow, but a good hard frost hopefully means the boggy sections will be frozen.
The approach road to Langleeford is slippery. Harthope Valley lies darkened beneath the lump of the hill, still untouched by the sun, and the burn is caked with spools of ice and rings cold bells. From the end of the road, the path leading uphill is clearly scored in shadow, a rough track scuffed in the peat heading straight towards the domed summit. Frozen pools of water crack beneath my feet and bring back memories of walking the path in deep snow, then a scalloped world of fluted, wind-scoured drifts rendering the path barely recognisable as a faint scoop.
I’m surprised by the swiftness of height gain this morning and soon the gentle fold of Scald Hill reveals broadening views across the undulating slopes of the hills as they come into view. Climbing higher, a bitter wind is searing sharply down the hill and I’m glad for every layer of clothing. Around me, the cropped heather is a dazzling mosaic of frosted sprigs: light catching ice, ice catching light. And beyond, the summit lies enigmatic under a halo of light, still folded in its own silhouette.
As I walk, thoughts turn easily to the year I’m leaving behind. The loss of two friends lies close to the surface of my mind today, and the sharp wind whispering around the hill carries the memories of their voices as vivid as the chuckle of grouse spluttering into the rough tussock in all directions. Other walks, in other places. Echoes of the past. A wave of unexpected sadness suddenly swims across me and for a while shadowed thoughts accompany me across the hard ground leading uphill.
In places the path loses itself in a series of peat hags, oozing a black liquidity visible just beneath the frozen surface, and I have to jump over ditches to find shallower crossing points. The momentary choices posed by this obstacle course are a welcome distraction. Ahead of me the summit gradually comes into view as a satisfying, rounded mass with the path leading straight as a die to the top. A string pulling me uphill out of the gloom.
The highest point itself is unceremonious and disappointing. A fence crossing and then a line of stone flags leading across a peatbog in a neat walkway. In places, the path diverges where the underlying peat has been badly eroded and the flags lie upended like broken teeth. White bags of sphagnum moss lie strewn across the ground, dominoes promising restoration. But beyond the rim of the plateau, the whole of Northumberland is now visible as a pale skirt, its gentle, undulating valleys and pocketed farmland spread out in an unbroken panorama, stretching generously as far as the eye can see. The blue ribbon of the North Sea melts to a pale horizon, softly merging with the sky. Along the coast, matchstick wind turbines whirl like something from a toy model.
It’s far too cold to linger and the white triangulation point elevated on a concrete plinth offers little refuge from the slicing wind. A group of us huddle in its lee, fumbling for sandwiches. I’m glad to leave as soon as I can, though progress is slowed by a thin layer of ice on the flagstones and I have to step carefully. It is a relief to move swiftly downhill and feel my blood circulating again. There is pleasure and ease retracing familiar ground with the wind behind me now, and the sun-clad afternoon slopes spread out below like a warm cloth.
After so much cold and wind, the sunlight feels more warming than it probably is, and I feel myself opening to the broad view of the surrounding hills and detailed textures of vegetation beneath my feet. There is time to appreciate delicacy in the fringes of ice, and areas where the rushes lie flattened in frozen rafts of hair. Even the eroded peat hags have acquired a sort of basic sculptural beauty in the meagre afternoon warmth. Across the valley, the skyline is pocked with craggy outcrops and the lower slopes are dotted with small, circular gatherings of sheep, like cup and ring marks, as if they have naturally fallen into these configurations following some ancient instinct.
Lower down, the path leads past a series of grouse butts dug into the hill. These round, stone-lined hollows, each shoulder height in depth and topped with a turf wall, are carved out of the peat in a sequence of strangely utilitarian, concealed hides, each numbered at its entrance for a shooting party. All day the hill has been alive with grouse flying, reminding me how heavily keepered this area is. But there are no guns today. I step into the first butt I come to. Inside, there is instant refuge from the wind, a quiet circle of shelter graced with privacy, bone-cold, but shelter nonetheless.
Leaning on the soft turf wall, I can see that shadow has crept up from the valley below and the whole of the hill before me is now backlit by a seam of strong afternoon light, pouring over the shoulder of the hill, bathing everything with sharpness and delight. All across the slopes, the light has caught droplets of melted frost on the heather in a sea of orange flares, as if the whole hill has been set alight with small fires. I’m at eye level facing right into the dazzling light through a fringe of bleached grasses, golden and leaning in the wind. The descending path cuts a clear line, like a brush mark, exquisitely defined in its own shadow.
For a few moments, the whole hill comes alive in an illuminated and transient magic, which washes over me abundantly in all directions; an invitation to step into happiness. As momentary as its brief glory, like a match that is struck, then extinguished, the sun is already sinking behind the hill, draining colour with it, slipping back like a silk scarf pulled into the core of the earth, and leaving everything unchanged, yet somehow more vibrant for its sharing of light.
I feel changed by the hill, as if returning from another country. Down in the valley, the stands of birch and conifer have caught the last light, their tops still glowing. Flocks of fieldfares flicker from tree to tree, their honeyed bellies looping in restless flashes between the branches. A damp, earthy smell rises from the wood, familiar and enclosing. As I reach the trees, a stoat streaks across the path like a sharpened pencil, its sudden darting movement and tiny world of moving body warmth so intimate with the forest floor, it seems to draw an invisible line with it. I step across its welcoming threshold, glad to be moving through the trees towards the waiting year, and leaving the cold slab of the hill behind me.
