A Homecoming of Sorts
Five days healing in the Cheviots
By Trevor H. Smith
August 2023
Part One: Steve from Otterburn.
I should have seen it coming. He had already offered me what water he was carrying, despite his being only a quarter of the way in to a 21-mile bike ride.
He informed me that the rain, which had started as forecast, at noon, was now expected to carry on into the evening.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Trevor.’
‘Listen, Trevor, take me number and if you get to Rochester – that’s how they say it here, by the way, ROE-chester – and you’re stuck, if the rain’s coming down and you’ve had enough, give me a ring and I’ll come and get you and run you into Byrness.’
I could just about make out what looked like a red flag on the crest of the hill from my snack stop at Pedlar’s Stone, named after the merchants that once hawked their wares in the creeping mists of this borderland, and my suspicions were confirmed long before I reached it. The Ministry of Defence had closed the Otterburn Ranges for live firing sessions between 9am and 5pm. Any thoughts I had of contravening these bylaws were quelled by the accompanying notice, which read:
‘DANGER. Do not touch any military debris. It may explode and kill you.’
Well, I don’t need to be told twice.
The closure of the ranges meant a five-mile detour on today’s planned route, extending my hike from a far-end-of-comfort-range 15 miles to the near end of my discomfort range. 20 miles. It would be my longest day walking since Middleton-in-Teesdale to Dufton five years earlier. That was day ten of the Pennine Way – my legs, feet, and every other muscle I had discovered along the way, had been well broken in over the previous nine days on the trail. But more than that, I had Derek by my side.
I thanked Steve for his kind offer, took his number, and set on my way. I eyeballed him to scope the veracity of his offer. Not that it had been necessary – everything about him spoke of his generosity, and beyond his obviously being a very decent person, reflected the broader kindness of strangers for which this most northern corner of England is well known. It’s not just the accent that warms us to them – imagine Geordie with its edges softened by the North Pennine winds but be sure to stop your imagination short of the half-Scottish border-brogue that kicks in a dozen or so miles farther north. Steve from Otterburn wasn’t offering me this kindness out of pity for my feet (though he understood the pain of long-distance exertion), nor was he offering merely in lieu of the image he had invoked, of later today and my very likely rain-soaked self, splodging down into ROW-chester in search of a phone box. He’d have made similar offers regardless of the circumstances. I was a person with a potential need for which he could easily, and only very slightly inconveniently, provide.
I should have seen it coming, you can see Steve’s green flags from a mile away. He merely spoke the offer his northern heart compelled him to make.