Windy Gyle

About Windy Gyle

Windy Gyle sits on the England-Scotland border in the Cheviot Hills, rounded and grass-covered like its neighbours. It is the highest summit on the border, though not the border's highest ground: that lies on the western shoulder of The Cheviot, at Cairn Hill West Top or Hangingstone Hill. Counting the summit as both Scottish and English, and applying the usual 30 m prominence rule, it is the most easterly mountain in Scotland.

Russell's Cairn crowns the top, with a hollow that will shelter around fifteen people from the wind. The border passes straight through the cairn, though only the map shows it: the fence that marks the line elsewhere is missing here.

The Pennine Way crosses the summit, and approaches also come from the Coquet valley in England and Cocklawfoot in Scotland. The view runs north to the Scottish Borders, the Eildons and Edinburgh, and south across the southern Cheviots to the North Pennines.

Background written from facts in the Wikipedia article on Windy Gyle (CC BY-SA 4.0). Heights, prominence and grid references come from the Database of British & Irish Hills, not from Wikipedia.

Access rights here

Daylight at this summit today

Sunrise

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Sunset

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Daylight

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Civil twilight ends

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Computed astronomically for 55.431, -2.230. Plan your finish with the daylight safety planner.

Finding the summit

The recorded summit point is trig point. That distinction matters on broad or flat tops, where the obvious cairn is not always the true high point.

Survey method

Abney level

Record revised

20-Jul-11

Drop measured from

NT878168 · 506 m

Survey notes are field observations recorded in the Database of British & Irish Hills (v18.3, CC BY 4.0) by the hill-surveying community.

Long-distance paths past this hill

One waymarked long-distance route runs within 2.5 km of the summit — useful if you are linking this hill into a longer walk, or want a made path for the approach.

Route lines © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL); distance from the summit computed by OpenFell.

Which hill this one belongs to

Windy Gyle is not counted as an independent hill in its own right. In prominence terms it belongs to The Cheviot (816 m) — the nearest Marilyn you can reach from this summit without first dropping below its key col, 506 m.

Grouping is by prominence alone: a summit belongs to the nearest higher Marilyn it connects to without a deeper intervening col. Over a large massif that can gather hills no one would walk in a single day, and which few would describe as parts of the same mountain — it is a measure of independence, not a suggested route.

Nearest listed peaks