In 1971 a group of young lads and their Jeeps conquered Cheviot
‘Four-wheel drive, a steady pace and a lot of luck seemed to be the best approach’
The great whaleback-shaped ridge of The Cheviot rises to 2,676 feet above sea level and lends its name to the range of hills that sit astride England’s border with Scotland. The Cheviot itself is the core of an ancient volcano much weathered into the familiar rounded profile beloved of Northumbrians and those who seek out wild and lonely places.
Writing in 1728, Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe, was so concerned at the steep ascent that he was sure the summit would be surrounded by precipices. In fact, the top of Cheviot is broad and flat and was described in the late 1800s by William Weaver Tomlinson as “a desolate looking tract of treacherous moss hags and oozy peat-flats traversed by deep sykes and interspersed by black, stagnant pools.”
In 1971, the military vehicle scene was very much in its infancy in the north east but, to a young man from Durham in his early twenties called Nick Johnson, reaching the summit of Cheviot was to become something of an obsession.
Nick had acquired a rather beaten-up but serviceable early MB Jeep but his first tw…
