NORTHUMBERLAND: “Cheviot View” is a name that brings a touch of romantic optimism to a Tyneside suburb. This week, with cold, clear air blustering in from the north-west, the name justified itself magnificently. Familiar views took on a new dimension with the extraordinary clarity of the air. From rising ground just outside Newcastle, I could see the usual dark scar or the Simonsides, 25 miles away, forming a backdrop for the broad, pastoral scene of the lowlands. Beyond them, in sharp silhouette, were three gleaming white domes of the Cheviot Hills; the Cheviot itself flanked by Hedgehope and Cushat Law. The snow seemed to reveal gullies on the hill slopes. Above them was the brilliance of scudding cumulus clouds and the occasional break-out of cumulonimbus trailing its anvil in the upper air.

Visibility of 40 miles is not so unusual in this county, especially with a westerly airstream because there is virtually no industrial area between here and the west coast. The air, then, has a clean, unpolluted tang. But views of such clarity, holding the whole county in compass, are more rare and give the season a special quality, compensating for the wild buffeting of the crocuses and the burns rising ominously, brown with silt.