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WALK 4

A Gentle Introduction to Cheviot’s Foothills

Start/Finish	Halterburn Valley, GR 840277, or Kirk Yetholm (add 2 miles)
Distance	5 miles (8km)
Total Ascent	984ft (300m)
Grade	2
Time	2½ hours
Maps	OS 1:25 000 Explorer OL16, The Cheviot Hills OS 1:50 000 Landranger sheet 74, Kelso & Coldstream Harvey 1:40 000 SuperWalker, Cheviot Hills
Parking	Limited parking between road and Halter Burn, GR 840277
Accommodation	Yetholm – hotel, bed-and-breakfasts, youth hostel, caravan park

A gentle introduction to the foothills of the Cheviots, this circular walk includes sections of the waymarked Pennine Way (with fine views of the high Cheviots, including the Cheviot, en route), coupled with a picturesque return in the Halterburn Valley. Good paths and an easy ascent of 984ft (300m) make this 2½ hour journey a pleasure.

At the northern end of the Halterburn Valley a cattle-grid signals the starting point (limited parking on the verges of the farm track on the left). From the start make for the stream (Halter Burn), easily forded in summer, or take the wooden bridge in winter. With a stone dyke on the left for 200 yards, follow the track and then the pathway east contouring the lower southern slopes of coned Green Humbleton as far as the sheep pens and Pennine Way marker post. Ascend east-southeast with the grassy track, passing a finger post indicating the relative routes of the Pennine Way and St Cuthbert’s Way, to the mound ahead and beyond that the Border fence. Before the gated border line, just over the mound turn right for 40 yards or so to inspect the Stob Stones and the extensive rippling hills beyond. Return to the gate, which marks the boundary between Scotland and England with a drystone dyke and wire-and-post fence, but do not pass through.

The Border fence The first written evidence of the actual position of the eastern border was in 1173, when reference was made to the Tweed as the border. In 1222 a joint boundary commission met to define the border, but the task proved too much, so only a small section was agreed upon. Further work between 1542 and 1604 achieved little. The border as we know it today seems to have been born between 1604 and 1648, after the Union of the Crowns in 1603. Today’s border fence remains an extremely useful navigational aid, and many have good reason to be grateful for its presence on these bleak and lonely hills (see Walks 5 and 14).

The Stob Stones To the west of these two prehistoric earth-fast boulders, in the hazy distance of the Tweed Valley, stand the three distinctive peaks of the Eildon Hills at Melrose, aligned precisely by the leading edge of the larger of the two Stob Stones.

Follow instead the directional Pennine Way finger post south, with wall and fence on the left, via a sharply descending and then ascending path, wet and boggy in places, leading to the col below the summit of White Law 1407ft (417m). This testing section of ½ mile (0.8km), parallel to the wall, rises to the visible T-junction of stone dykes and stile on the col between White Law and Whitelaw Nick. Once over the stile turn left, ascending for 150yds (137m) to the summit of White Law, the highest point of the walk and a fine vantage point.

White Law The name, one can only surmise, originates from the vegetation that covers the upper slopes. Much of the grass on White Law is mat grass (Nardus stricta), an unusual species that in June bears an unbranched spike and in late summer bleaches almost white, giving rise to the local description ‘white lands’, hence the name White Law (hill).

A few yards beyond the apex of White Law the border fence (now a wire-and-post fence) turns right, i.e. south, and descends sharply to the saddle 300ft (91.5m) below. Here a small gate in the fence marks the point where the route leaves the Pennine Way by turning right, i.e. west, onto a descending grassy path, and then a track through the bracken-clad hillside of Steer Rig, to cross the shallow burn to the ruin of Old Halterburnhead in the valley below.

The Pennine Way Tom Stephenson, late of the Ramblers’ Association, was the founding father of this long-distance walkway, 270 miles (434km) from Edale to Kirk Yetholm. It is immortalised in the writings of A Wainwright in his Pennine Way Companion, where he described the traverse of the Cheviot range from Byrness to Kirk Yetholm as, ‘the longest and loneliest of all’.

Leave the sad ruins of Old Halterburnhead to the squabbling rooks and take the farm track north along the valley floor towards the working farm of Burnhead. Two hundred yards (183m) before the steading a Pennine Way finger post directs us right, by footbridge, wicket gate and wallside path, east of the farm, before rejoining the road in the Halterburn Valley. It is a pleasant stroll to the starting cattle-grid, allowing the walker time to pause and ‘smell the roses’.

The Halterburn Valley This 2½ mile (4km) stretch of the valley is perhaps more familiar to Pennine Wayfarers than resident Borderers. Forlorn reminders of former days still remain in the crumbling and decaying ruins of Old Halterburnhead, inhabited by itinerant sheep and noisy rooks. The walk alongside the burn is a delight, where from spring to late summer plants in bloom please the eye and brighten the day, primroses in particular, and musk on the banks of the burn.

Old Halterburnhead

Kirk Yetholm This village, so close to the English border, was at one time the rallying point for the Scottish Border Gypsies, providing a convenient springboard from which to nip over into England in times of strife – a far cry from 1540, when Gypsy King John Faa signed a treaty with James V of Scotland in which he was described as, ‘Our lovit Johnne Faa, Lord and Earl of little Egypt’. The last king, Charles Blyth Faa (whose coronation coach was drawn by six donkeys), died in 1802, and was succeeded by a Gypsy queen.