Walking The Pennine Way When I Was Eleven: Stage 18 - Cheviot Camp to Kirk Yetholm

Start: Cheviot Camp
Finish: Kirk Yetholm
Distance Walked: 23 miles
Total Distance Walked: 263 miles
We were up at dawn to begin the long trek through the Cheviot hills and complete the Pennine Way. Much of the early part of the day was very close to the Border Fence between England and Scotland with views of the hills and valleys. We saw a mountain shelter hut in the distance. The path was decent, on grass and with the lack of rain wasn't too boggy. We saw very few people although as we neared the Cheviot later in the morning we weren't completely alone. The Cheviot is the highest point in the eponymous range of hills and lies a mile off the main Pennine Way route. The area around it is featureless and quite uninspiring with the summit rumoured to be wet and peaty. We weren't tempted to make the detour to the top and back.
We climbed the last hill in England, Windy Gyle, before crossing the border for the last time and entering Scotland for good. The last hill on the Pennine Way was the Schill, six miles from the end of the Way. As we started the descent to Kirk Yetholm our thoughts turned to how we would get home afterwards. My Dad had talked about getting buses and trains but it seemed quite convoluted and I wasn't really relishing the prospect.
As we came out of the hills and reached a quiet road going down into Kirk Yetholm I saw a car parked on the grass and standing by it, my mother. She had driven up in the early hours from Nottinghamshire to meet us. We had phoned home in the evenings when we could on the walk but she had kept her plan to come up a secret, although my Dad had guessed. While we had been walking she had been busy picking raspberries in the garden. The good weather we had experienced on the walk had resulted in a bumper crop of more than 100lbs. We stopped for a picnic, it was by now mid-afternoon, and after a short time resumed the Pennine Way.
It was downhill for the last stretch into Kirk Yetholm. Apart from my mother the village was deserted. The traditional finishing point is the Border Hotel where walkers are invited to have a celebraatory drink at the expense of Alfred Wainwright, who wrote the most famous guide to the Pennine Way. When we walked it we didn't use that book but I now have a copy and it is excellent. Originally the offer was for a pint although this later was reduced to a half. Of course my sister and I couldn't have a pint but we did go into the Border Hotel. The landlord let us sign the book for walkers who had completed the Way and told us about some of the celebrities who had been in, including one or two that he hadn't allowed to sign as he didn't beleive they had done all of the walk. The place was still very quiet as we stopped to take a few photos before setting off home again.
The three of us at the end of the Pennine Way

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