St Cuthbert’s Way, UK

St Cuthbert’s Way is a beautiful and intriguing walk across borders and through centuries of history that have left an indelible imprint on the landscape. 

From the ruins of a 12th-century Cistercian Abbey in Scotland, up into the atmospherically foggy Eildon Hills, alongside the green verged, swift-flowing River Tweed and on to an ancient Roman Road, St Cuthbert’s Way climbs up through beechwoods and silver birch forests to the wild, sweeping Cheviots. After crossing the border it continues on through Weetwood Moor, past St Cuthbert’s Cave, across rolling fields to the coast and, on the low tide, to the mystery-shrouded Holy Island of Lindisfarne. From Lindisfarne, you can continue on up the Northumberland Coast to Berwick-upon-Tweed, the northernmost town in England.

Each day walking in and out of old market towns and villages; one a heartland of the Romani people of Scotland, another where Mary Queen of Scots stayed in 1566 and several more abandoned during the clearances of the 18th and early 19th century. All villages heavily contested over the centuries; the Anglo-Scottish border changing frequently during the brutal wars of Scottish independence in the 14th century and the Rough Wooing of the mid-16th century and still unsettled today. 

Journeys on foot to holy places were popular in Britain until they were banished by Henry VIII in 1538. Now, in the midst of a global renaissance of pilgrimage, old ways are being re-discovered and pilgrim routes re-created. St Cuthbert’s Way, named after a 7th-century saint, was opened in 1996 and links Melrose, the place where St Cuthbert started his religious life, with Holy Island where he was (first) buried.  

Melrose to Jedburgh (34 km)

The brogue thick with rolled Rs as we step down off the bus. The air sharp, almost icy. A complimentary whisky on check-in, a fine tradition kept alive at the Kings Arms Hotel. 

A late afternoon visit to Melrose Abbey. It was the largest and richest of the medieval abbeys in the border country until it was felled during the Protestant Reformation of 1560. Now largely in ruins, the abbey is known for its carved decorative details of saints, dragons and gargoyles. The embalmed heart of Robert the Bruce, Scotland’s warrior monarch and victor over the English at the Battle of Bannockburn, is interred here. He died and was buried at Dunfermline Abbey but not before instructing that his heart be taken on a crusade against the Moors in Spain and returned to Melrose for burial. St Cuthbert grew up nearby and was Prior at the Old Melrose Abbey before he moved to Lindisfarne. 

Out into the grey, drizzly day a little later than is our habit, the early morning glow gone from the sky. Up a steep, slippery path to the triple peaks of the Eildon Hills. Their summits are renowned for their splendid views that today are shrouded in mist. Almost lost in this foggy, mysterious world is a Bronze Age hillfort, one of the largest in Scotland. It was a stronghold of the Votadini tribe and a place of ceremonial gatherings before the Romans arrived with their new world order and converted it into a military signalling station. 

In and out of dewy forests, the light a strange woody green. Late flowering heather; pheasants striding resplendently across fields; the village of Bowden with its ancient, octagonal, stone well. 

Meandering through gently rolling farmland and woodlands to the River Tweed, one of the great salmon fishing rivers of Britain. Across a bridge, past the Temple of the Muses and an ornate stone gateway, built as an entrance to an orchard in the early 19th century, to the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey. Founded in 1150, it was torched by English forces in 1544. Its chapel contains the tomb of Sir Walter Scott; poet, playwright and the originator of the historical novel. Adding grace and serenity to the Gothic relic are the gardens, planted with rare trees including Atlas cedars, Californian redwoods and a Tibetan cherry brought back by a 19th-century plant hunter. Dryburgh Abbey’s oldest tree is a yew, reported having been planted by a monk in 1136. The longevity of the yew tree represents eternal life and its poisonous berries symbolise death. 

Back along a riverbank lush with ferns and on through the fair town of St Boswell. Past Maxton church (dedicated to St Cuthbert) and on to Dere Street, a Roman road constructed around 800 AD that ran from York to the Firth of Forth. We follow its straight lines through avenues of trees, alongside fields and down lanes walled with stone fences. 

We pause at Lady Lilliard’s tomb, a monument to a woman who according to legend fought bravely at the Battle of Ancrum Moor after the death of her lover during the Rough Wooing, a mid-16th-century war between England and Scotland, initiated by Henry VIII. Henry intended to control Scotland by marrying his young son Edward to Mary, the infant Queen of Scotland but the Scots liked not the manner of the wooing and could not stoop to being bullied into love. 

Rooks in the stubble. Wild geese in flight. The Monteath Mausoleum alone on the skyline, its entrance guarded by two stone lions, one awake and one strangely asleep. On across fields and along the river path to Jedburgh with its oft-sacked Abbey and the fortified house where Mary Queen of Scots stayed in 1566. She spent a few weeks here, so exhausted by her arduous duties that she caught a fever and nearly died. Later on, when held in captivity by Elizabeth I of England she lamented “Would that I had died in Jedburgh …” 

Early evening dog walkers out and about and another couple walking St Cuthbert’s Way. We may not see them again but we’ll have a sense of their presence on the trail and know we’re not alone. 

Jedburgh to Kirk Yetholm (27 km)

A fine morning. Fog drifting through the valley below. Gently rolling hills. A patchwork of green and pale gold. Hedgerows delineating the fields and trees tracing the meanderings of creeks. The trunks of silver birch scribbled with poetry. 

Near Oxnam Water, in a field backed by high sandstone cliffs, we come across a hunting party. Kitted out in tweed and khaki, dogs and guns at the ready, they are off into the open pasture to hunt for partridge. Later, from within the sanctuary of a beech forest, we hear the crack of a gunshot and the hiss of alarmed birds. 

Low cloud and fog make an island of the hilltop from which the Waterloo monument rises. This massive sandstone tower commemorates the Duke of Wellington’s triumph over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and shares its site with the remains of an Iron Age hill fort. 

On towards the row of houses that is Cessford, once a much larger and thriving settlement. Following the Enclosure Acts of the late 18th and early-19th century, many of its smaller houses were demolished, open fields and common land enclosed, and tenants displaced. 

At the ruins of the 15th-century Cessford Castle, once a stronghold of the Ker family and built with four-metre thick walls as a defence against the English, we meet two young American women. They are archaeologists, out walking St Cuthbert’s Way and on the lookout for ‘old things’ and ‘old stories’, especially stories about the shifting realities of life as a borderer. 

There’s a legend about a medieval dragon that lived here, on the northeast side of Linton Hill. Emerging from its lair at dusk and dawn, it ravaged the countryside, devouring livestock and people. One dawn, William de Somerville, ‘a man of reckless courage’, approached the dragon’s hideout and killed it using a spear dipped in burning tar. The writhing death throes of the dragon brought down a mountain and created what is now the curious topography of these hills.  

A formation of geese in the sky above us. Ring-necked pheasants exploding out of hedgerows and launching into flight. At Morebattle we stop for lunch in a cafe within a near-derelict ‘but under restoration’ 18th-century church. The timid but determined vicar whose vision it is to remake the church has recently returned to the village after a 20-year hiatus in Australia. She’s pleased to share stories of life in Canberra and her plans for the church which she hopes will become a focal point for the local community and a stopping place for pilgrims. 

We climb up to the sparse and beautiful Cheviots via Grubbit Law and walk along the ridge to Wideopen Hill, at 400 metres the highest point on St Cuthbert’s Way. From here we can see back to the Eildon Peaks and across to the flat-topped hill that is Hownam Law, site of another Iron Age hill fort. 

Following a stone wall uphill and down dale to Town Yetholm with its streets of thatched roofed cottages. In Kirk Yetholm we catch a glimpse of a man in a kilt walking out of a bar and soon enough see him again, playing in a pipe band at the closing ceremony of the annual shepherds’ gathering.

At the bustling Border Hotel, we strike up a conversation with a couple of locals, their brogue so thick we miss part of what they’re saying. Even so, it’s a spirited exchange of opinions on Brexit and where Scotland sits in the debate. At dinner, the waiter presents us with a bottle of wine, a gift from Gregor, one of the men who befriended us at the bar. We’re sincerely touched by his generosity.      

Kirk Yetholm to Wooler (21 km)

Kirk Yetholm was once the heartland of the Faa-Blyths, the kings and queens of the Lowland Romani people of Scotland. They overwintered in the border villages and took to the roads in the spring to sell their wares and trade their horses.

Out onto the high route of the Pennine Way and into a day spent largely up in the Cheviots, an alluring, upland range of rolling hills and knobby peaks that straddles the border of two imaginings. Formed by volcanic action millions of years ago and scarred by ice and rock, Leonard Woolf found in the Cheviots “an extraordinary stillness and peace. Nowhere in the world is the light and colour of sky and earth more lovely.” 

The land of the curlew, of Iron Age ring forts, neolithic stone circles and vast expanses of moorland grass and heather. We walk uphill in the unceasing rain to the border fence and climb over a stile into England. 

Stretching south from the arts and crafts village of Hethpool is the tranquil College Valley, an area rich in prehistoric remains and in wildlife. Deer, red squirrels, black grouse and a herd of long-horned goats. In and out of trees and uphill again, stopping to confer with a couple of Scottish walkers and determining that we’ve taken a wrong turn. Morris, the chattier of the two, is retracing his St Cuthbert’s Way of 20 years ago as a respite from a much more ambitious project; walking the entire length of the Scottish coast. 

Past the bronze-tinted Yeavering Bell, the site of a large Iron Age hill fort, and out across windswept moorland. The peat bogs marshy, the track a rivulet, the heather no longer blazing. The Battle of Humbleton, mentioned in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, was fought between the English and the Scots just north of here in 1402.

Into the woods and down through heathland to the stone-built market town of Wooler. We recover from the rigours of the day with a G&T made from locally distilled gin infused with Northumbrian-foraged botanicals. 

Wooler to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne (30 km)

The sky various shades of magenta as we step out early into the morning. Following the course of a dismantled rail line and then up and across Weetwood Moor, site of a large annual livestock fair until the late 19th century. While the fair is long gone, the moor still shelters the remains of stone circles and rocks engraved with prehistoric markings. 

Across the River Till by way of a 16th-century bridge and on to the Devil’s Causeway, a dead-straight section of Roman road. The wind gusting but at our back. Seagulls blown inland and tossed about like scraps of paper. A covey of grouse scurrying across a field. Birds the same colour as the stubble. Rooks whirling in the sky overhead. Past a WWII concrete pillbox and on through kissing gates to a farmscape of ploughed fields and hawthorn hedgerows dotted red with berries.

Walking through dusky green conifer woods to the dramatic sandstone overhang where monks rested with St Cuthbert’s remains in 875 AD, after fleeing Lindisfarne. On a rocky ridge above the cave, we can just make out Holy Island, shimmering off in the distance. 

At Holburn Lake and Moss, a wintering refuge for greylag geese, St Cuthbert’s Way joins St Oswald’s Way, a pilgrim route opened in 2006. We walk past Kyloe Woods, a reserve for the endangered red squirrel, through the village of Fenwick and on towards the coast. Before we can cross the main east-coast railway line, we have to call the signalman on the yellow phone provided and get the all-clear. Then, past fields and WW2 coastal defences, we see the line of tall, thin poles that mark the ancient pilgrim path across the causeway to Holy Island, safe to walk only at low tide. 

The mournful cawing and wailing of thousands of seabirds. The world flat and watery, sea and sky and land indistinguishable from each other. Even at low tide the two-hour ritual crossing is adventurous and requires navigating mudflats, sea pools and deep channels. A couple of months ago six walkers misread the tide and had to be rescued. They were knee-deep in water when they raised the alarm. Eleven minutes later, the time it took for the coast guard to arrive, they were chest-deep in water and struggling against a powerful current. 

Every Easter, hundreds of pilgrims, some of them carrying large wooden crosses, walk through the border country and across to Holy Island on Good Friday morning to commemorate the passion, death and resurrection of Christ.  

Before night falls we wander around the island to absorb something of its beauty and its history. The Lindisfarne Priory was founded in 635 AD by St Aidan, an Irish monk. St Cuthbert joined the monastery in the 670s and, as Prior, reformed the monks’ way of life so that they followed the religious practices of Rome, rather than of Ireland. He lived for a time as a hermit on a remote offshore island until he was made a Bishop in 685. He was regarded as a seer and a healer and after his death in 687 was buried at Holy Island. In 875, following Viking raids, his remains were removed by the monks and later buried at Durham Cathedral. The priory was rebuilt and sacked again several times during periods of border warfare and religious suppression. It is now an imposing sandstone ruin open to the sky. 

Holy Island is famous for producing the illuminated manuscript that is the Lindisfarne Gospels (now held in the British Museum). It predates the Book of Kells by nearly a century and incorporates exquisite Mediterranean, Anglo-Saxon and Celtic artwork. 

On a steep, rocky outcrop at one end of the island is the magnificent 16th-century Lindisfarne Castle, transformed into a home by Edwin Lutyens in the early 20th century. To the north of the Castle is a small, walled garden designed by Gertrude Jekyll. Just offshore is an island with the remains of a medieval chapel. All around are sea and lakes and dunes and, at night, the on/off flashing of lighthouses.    

Holy Island to Berwick-Upon-Tweed (19 km)

The sea inky blue. The sky holding a storm. The shore lined with bird watchers well before sunrise, binoculars and long lenses at the ready, all hoping to be the first to sight and ‘capture’ a rare bird.

Back to the mainland. Walking via the concrete causeway this time, with a hurry to our stride. The tide is coming in and the pilgrim’s way is already calf-deep in water. Pools are forming on the causeway. Thousands of water birds feed feverishly on the soon to be inundated mudflats. Before long, the storm breaks and obliterates sea, sky and pole line. 

Leaving behind the wild, mystical, windswept island we find our way to the Northumberland Coast Path. A double row of concrete anti-tank blocks, two pillboxes and a graffitied, disintegrating observation tower. This coast was at risk of German invasion during WW2 and was used by the Allies for live bombing practice. Signs warn us not to touch or pick up any metal objects lest they explode. 

A break for tea and scones at a golf clubhouse where ‘walkers are welcome’ even if the well-turned-out members look askance at our scruffiness. Then, northwards up the coast, climbing high, grassy dunes to look out onto the broad arc of Chiswick Sands, thought to be ‘one of the most beautiful stretches of coastline anywhere in the UK.’ 

Fossil-rich, folded limestone reefs, the ruins of an old lime kiln near Middle Skerr, a farm perched on a hill high above the sea. We take the clifftop path down to the promenade at Spittal where the English artist L.S.Lowry painted and follow the artist’s trail into Berwick-upon-Tweed, its old town still encircled by elaborate 16th-century Italianate walls. For more than 400 years Berwick was central to the border wars between the Kingdoms of England and Scotland, the town changing hands several times. Richard of Gloucester finally retook it for England, although to this day many Berwickers feel a closer affinity to Scotland than to England. In the 1950s the artist and Scottish independence activist, Wendy Wood, moved the border signs south to the middle of the Tweed River and in 2008 the politician, Christine Grahame, made calls in the Scottish Parliament for Berwick to become part of Scotland again.  

The end of our exploring finds us back at our journey’s beginning. Six days ago we arrived at the Berwick-Upon-Tweed railway station, our train passing through several English counties and across a high, arched bridge spanning the River Tweed to reach this border town. We re-board the train, this time travelling south to the far-off capital of the Kingdom, our heads full of old stories and images of sparse beauty.  

 

See our Thames Path story for an insight into a very different walk in the UK