Food ✪ Ambience ✪✪
Service ✪✪✪
The Cheviot Hotel
Bellingham
Northumberland
NE48 2AU
Accessibility? No Gluten free? Yes
01434 220 696
www.thecheviothotel.co.uk
Taking a right at the roundabout where the B6318 meets the A68, and heading north toward Kielder and Scotland, light immediately seems to get a good deal scarcer.
At this time of year, travelling at night, there is a strangely hypnotic quality to this section of highway. Headlights pick out the straight white lines on asphalt which stretches, without the interruption of a bend, for miles ahead. The only variety is provided by a series of dramatic dips and peaks. The pitchy darkness to each side of the car is disorientating, making it hard to tell whether you’re hooning up or down a slope, other than by the feeling in the pit of your stomach. It’s like being on a long, dark Tron-inspired rollercoaster.
My latest trip to these parts served as a slightly depressing reminder that it isn’t just light that this area around Kielder lacks. Good cooking is in as short supply as photons. While the world-class gloom brings visitors from all over the world, keen to peer into the infinite murk of deep space, there continues to be nowhere of truly stellar quality for them to eat. It is a mystery of intergalactic proportions.
