Chapter XIX: Drumburgh to Bowness

From Drumburgh Castle I continued my way through the village, where there are many clay houses. Nothing of the Wall is to be seen until after a sharp double turn in the road. Here, after the second turn, I saw the Wall-ditch plainly in a meadow to the south of the road; this was just after passing the schools, where a young master was drilling the boys and girls with a great assumption of sternness. The Wall can be traced at intervals in the fields to the south, following pretty closely the line of the road as far as Port Carlisle.

Nearing Glasson, both Wall and road turn towards the sea. At the cross-roads to the north of Glasson, the tall chimneys of the Dornock works in Dumfriesshire are seen across the Solway, straight ahead along the road we are travelling. Soon after this, the road runs along close to the sea, with only a grassy stretch between, and then Port Carlisle comes into view. The core of the Wall is to be seen occasionally on the left. Three farms stand {216} here, facing the sea--Lowtown, Westfield and Kirkland.

Port Carlisle was known as Fisher's Cross before the canal to Carlisle was opened in 1823. The attempt to make it the port of Carlisle was a failure, owing to the tendency of the harbour to get silted up with sand and mud. In 1854 the canal was filled up as far as Drumburgh, and a railway made on its site. Docks were constructed at Silloth, and the railway continued to that point.

Until recently travellers to Port Carlisle had to continue their journey from Drumburgh in a "horse-dandy," drawn along the dry bed of the canal. Now the railway goes all the way; and one of the dandies, painted Indian red, occupies a distinguished position as an "antiquity" opposite the platform of the railway station, while the other serves in the lowlier capacity of a hen-house close by.

Port Carlisle consists of a single street of comfortable-looking stone houses facing the sea. A well-kept bowling-green and tennis-courts near the station provide amusement for the railway servants in the long intervals between trains. It was all interval when I was there, for this part of the line was closed during the coal-strike.

The jetty where the boats used to unload is now in a ruinous condition. The sea has broken through it, so at high tide the far end is a grass-grown island where visitors have been cut off from escape by the {217} water. I looked for the Packet Hotel where the fragment of an altar, inscribed "MATRIBVS SVIS," is built in over the door, and I found it was no longer an Inn, but a farm-house, the last house in the long street, just where the coast-line begins to bend round towards Bowness.

I had seen no trace of the Wall since passing Kirkland, but I knew I ought to be able to pick it up here, so I walked round behind the ex-hotel, and began to look about. A girl was sitting sewing in the doorway of a cottage, and I asked if she could help me. "Oh yes," she said; "I'll fetch my father." An old man appeared, with a pot of green paint in one hand and a paint-brush in the other.

"You have come to the right man," said he.

Then, with a dramatic wave of the paint-brush, "The Roman Wall passed by this very doorstep." He gave me full instructions as to how to find it farther on:

"Follow along the road to Bo'ness till you come to a gooter across the road, then turn to the left up a grassing-field, and go on till you come to an elbow. Turn to the right, and you come to a high lift; over that lift you'll find the Wall."

I obeyed these instructions as closely as I could, but I made the mistake of following a closed gutter instead of an open one, and this involved me in several unexpected difficulties. I reached the {218} Wall-line sooner than my guide had intended, and the farmers about here seem to tax their ingenuity to make it as difficult as possible to follow that line. I crept under barbed wire into a "grassing" field and safely reached the hedge. Here were undoubted signs of Wall-core. I followed it to the hedge of the next field, and there I stopped. The hedge seemed quite impregnable, and there was no gate; all the hedges were of the thickest, and even if I could have made a hole, it would have been contrary to my code. I turned back to see if I could find an opening into the field on my left. A large ash-tree grew in the hedge, and without much trouble I climbed into its lower boughs, and could then make a drop of 6 feet into the next field. But again I was done! There was a gate on the west, it is true, but it was locked, and so thickly interlaced with thorn-bushes that I could not climb it. There was nothing for it but to reclimb my ash-tree, and have another look at my first hedge. I now saw that the end of a long ladder was laid flat on the top of this hedge, and rested on a gate-post in the field of my desire. Great masses of thorn-bush were heaped up under the ladder, which had evidently been thrown across as an additional barrier. Here was an opportunity to turn an enemy into a friend! I pulled myself up on to the ladder, walked from rung to rung over the thorn-bushes, and jumped off at the end, feeling that I had scored {219} one over the farmer, for I had circumvented him without damaging his property. The next hedge was of thorn-trees growing on the ground, and there was just one small hole, between two trunks, big enough for me to creep through. And then I saw a fine piece of Wall--only the core, but several feet high, and in very good condition. A gateway had been cut right through it, and in the section the formation and the Roman mortar could be readily examined. The Wall-ditch was just discernible on its north side.

William Hutton says of this part of the Wall: "One mile prior to the extremity of our journey and at the distance of one inclosure on our left, appears in majesty, for the last time, Severus's Wall, being five or six hundred yards long, and three feet high, but, as in the mountains, all confusion. A fence grows upon it * * * In two places it is six feet high, eight broad, and three thick; but has no facing-stones." Dr. Bruce says that gunpowder was used in bringing it down.

It was after this that I came to the "elbow." The Wall-ditch was to be seen from the elbow running through the pasture to the next hedge. I followed, scrambling down the steep bank of a burn, and up the other side amid gorse and hawthorn, into a cart-track, with the Wall now on my right. The burn now served as the Wall-ditch.

I was quite near to the houses of Bowness by this {220} time, and a gate on my left across the meadow brought me into a narrow lane, and thus into the road, not far from the church.

In the churchyard I saw a man in light tweeds carrying a bucket of water. He asked me courteously if I would like to have the key of the church, and I found I was addressing the Rector. Except for a very beautiful Norman font, there is nothing remarkable about the church.

From the main street I made my way through a little iron gate opposite the "King's Arms," down a steep grassy slope, and on to the shore by means of a rickety, rusty iron ladder, riveted by one leg to a rock. The view was lovely across the sands. On my left, crossing the Solway, was the Annan Railway Bridge, which had just been condemned as unsafe, and Criffel showed in a violet haze beyond it.

I thought from the sands I could best distinguish the probable site of the Roman fort, and I believe that I did succeed in identifying the western rampart, and the south-west and north-west angles.

Bowness is a quiet little place, standing high up above the Solway, with steep cobbled streets and many clay houses, "whose walls," said an old inhabitant to me, "are as thick as my stick is long." As seen from the ridge above the road to the west of the village, eight strips of colour, gradually receding, make up my impression of the view. {221} First a strip of white road, then a strip of green grass; beyond that, a strip of yellow gorse; behind the gorse, a strip of marshland, pink with sea-thrift; then a strip of yellow dry sand, then a strip of brown wet sand; beyond that the blue water of the Solway, and, last of all, the blue-grey distance of Scotland.

There were fishing-smacks on the Solway, and there were fishermen fishing with their "half-nets" for salmon and trout.

Camden says of this part: "I marvailed at first, why they built here so great fortifications, considering that for eight miles or thereabout, there lieth opposite a very great frith and arme of the sea; but now I understand that every ebbe the water is so low, that the Borderers and beast-stealers may easily wade over." And he records how, in 1216, they came, and having stayed too long were swept away by the tide. His quaint words (or rather, Dr. Philemon Holland's quaint translation of them) are worth quoting:

"For Eden, that notable river, * * * powreth forth into a mighty masse of water, having not yet forgotten what adoe it had to pass away, struggling and wrestling as it did, among the carcasses of freebutters, lying dead in it on heapes, in the yeer of salvation, 1216, when it swallowed them up, loaden with booties out of England, and so buried that rabble of robbers under his waves."

{222} I searched about for the end of the Wall, where it was supposed to run northwards into the water, and was just about to give it up in despair, when I saw an old lady in a black sunbonnet leaning over the gate of a pretty little cottage. I got into conversation with her, and then of her own accord she told me that the Roman Wall ended in her garden, "behind that apple-tree." She spoke of the gentlemen who had come to investigate, and how they had followed it down from her garden to the shore, by the old schoolhouse, which is now used by the fishermen for keeping their nets. She added: "There's not many that sets any store by the Roman Wall here--only me."

So here I was, having actually arrived at my goal, at the end of my walk of 73½ miles--not as the crow flies, but as the Wall runs. I had made it probably twice as far, by digressions and excursions. For the present I felt I had had enough walking; I wanted to indulge in a lift; so I began to inquire for a pony and trap to take me back to Drumburgh Castle. I soon found one at an innocent-looking house in the village street, which turned out to be a farm-house, with a yard and byres at the back. The farmer's daughter, who drove me, asked me why I did not spend the night at Bowness. I told her that I had engaged a room at Carlisle because I could not be sure of getting a bed at Bowness; and I related my experiences on {223} the way to Carlisle. "Oh," she cried, "Bo'nes people isn't like _that_! _They'd_ no see you bet. Why, I'd give up my own bed to any one rather than let them go without. Folks say I'll be took in some day, but _I_ don't mind."

As we drove down the village street, she pointed out to me the Roman altar, mentioned by Bruce, built into an outhouse near the King's Arms. It is dedicated to Jupiter, for the welfare of the Emperors Gallus and Volusian, so it dates from about 251 A.D.

After visiting Drumburgh Castle, I went by train to Kirkandrews. A stout lady in the train asked me if I had been to Bowness. "Ah!" she said, "I know it well; I've been to many a funeral there. They bury them there from Glasson, and from Drumburgh, and I think from Kirkbride. It's a nice place, Bo'nes, to be buried." I inquired what were the special advantages. "Well, well, I can't exactly say, but it's a nice place, is Bo'nes; I'd as lief be buried there myself. My husband's father, he was a canal man, lived for twenty years on a houseboat on the canal; and _he's_ buried at Bo'nes."

And that was all the explanation I could get.

From Kirkandrews I walked back to Carlisle, first through Grinsdale, and then along the track of the Wall above the Eden. It was such a lovely evening! My shadow was cast by the lowering sun half across the blue waters of the Eden, and {224} Carlisle Castle and Cathedral appeared at intervals over the stone railway bridge, glowing in the warm light. As I neared Carlisle, the meadows were alive with children of all ages, enjoying the beautiful close of a hot day. Miners on strike were racing their whippets; small boys with hatchets were chopping off dead boughs for firewood on the steep tree-covered river banks; children were bathing and paddling from the rocks by the engine-house. A sweet smell of may was in the air. And I had a satisfied sense of "something accomplished, something done." The week's walk had been delightful, and my acquaintance with the Wall had been much extended and deepened; and yet I was not wholly sorry to return to civilized habits, and to unstrap my haversack from my shoulders for the last time.

But I had not quite said good-bye to the tramp I had been.

The following afternoon I left Carlisle to spend a day or two with friends in Northumberland, picking up my suit-case in Newcastle.

When I went up to dress for dinner that evening, I found to my horror that the maid had unpacked my _tramp's_ luggage, and distributed it about the room, while the suit-case was still locked and the key in my pocket!

And there were my poor, pathetic little bedroom-slippers, which I had had no chance of discarding {225} since I wore through their soles on the crags; there they were, spread out in such incongruous surroundings!

I sat down, and laughed and laughed and laughed. I could do nothing else. And then I gathered everything together and restored it to the haversack, strapping it up firmly, and consigning it to oblivion until such time as I could sort it out properly, ready for my next tramp.

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