Map 80: A Roman Road and Iron Age Forts

26 August 2024

My walk began from a remote spot below the Cheviot Hills at the end of the public road from the tiny village of Hownam. I walked up the track from Greenhill Farm towards the redundant Heatherhope Reservoir. Above me to my left I had already passed the remains of an Iron Age hillfort on Blackbrough Hill and a further hillfort and settlement on the hill above the reservoir.

I ignored what was the easier and more obvious path I should have followed up the hillside and followed a stream before turning to make a steep pathless ascent of Mid Hill to reach The Street, once an important Roman road, at sometimes a drovers’ track and now a grassy path across the moor.

The track became part of the Pennine Way. There’s an interesting sign in the middle of nowhere on the Scotland / England border advising that motor vehicles aren’t permitted.

I met the first walker I had seen since the beginning of the walk as I was about to turn off The Street – an electrician who was bravely walking following the death of his partner with terminal cancer eight weeks earlier. Not only that, but he was only nine months following a fractured shaft of femur distal to his hip replacement and determined to carry on walking despite the pain.

I continued on and found a relatively sheltered spot between Mozie Law and Beefstand Hill to sit and eat lunch whilst enjoying views over the Heatherhope Valley. In the background I could see the distinctive profile of the Eildon Hills.

My walk continued and just before I turned off the Pennine Way, I met a couple who had been making progress over several years to complete the walk as a series of day walks. Not just in one direction, as they walked from their car and then returned to their car each time so eventually they will have walked the entire Pennine Way in both directions. The people walking in this area seem to vbe truly inspirational.

I walked off the path over tussocky heather before reaching a clear path up to the cairn at the summit of Callaw Hill. The cairn is likely to have been the burial place of chieftains from one or more of the many fortified Iron Age settlements in the area. There were views both north to the Tweed valley and south to the Coquet valley.

There followed some more heather and bog hopping before reaching a path to descend to the track near the Heatherhope reservoir and walk downhill back to the road where I had started.

The Cheviots are indeed a remote range of hills, straddling part of the border between England and Scotland, with relatively few roads and habitations. However there are several ancient Roman routes and old drovers’ tracks which can be used as the basis for a multitude of adventurous and solitary walks across the gloriously isolated moorland.