The Cheviots

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All the border reivers knew the paths, tracks and secret valleys of the Cheviots. The range of hills provides a natural barrier between England and Scotland and the riders passed over and through them while riding out and returning with their plunder in the moonlight.
Muckle Cheviot is the highest hill in Northumberland at 2,674 feet (815m) and the summit of Windy Gyle is right on the border line,
While there is a barren, isolated beauty to the Cheviots now, there were at least some large wooded areas during the reiver period with the bounds of Cheviot Forest listed. It was also a dangerous place.
Lord Willoughby, the governor of Berwick and East March Warden, hated the Cheviots – ‘a wild tempestuous, accursed place where the sun is so removed,’ and wanted to return to the sunshine of the South of England: ‘that one ray of such brightness may deliver me from the darkness here, which I protest is no less to me than Hell!’ It was in December, mind.
Cessford arranged to meet Sir John Forster for a truce day ‘under Cheviot’ and also led a raid that ran along ‘on the backside of Cheviot,’ to Sir Cuthbert Collingwood’s house in 1587.
This was just after Cessford had joined up with Buccleuch and gathered their friends from Liddesdale, Ewesdale, Annandale and West and East Teviotdale to muster a terrifying force of 3,000 riders that threatened to strike into Northumberland as retaliation for a raid of 900 men. The Scots had been tipped off and left their houses empty and didn’t undertake the large retaliatory raid - instead Cessford rode out on Collingwood with just 30 horsemen to spoil and take prisoners.

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