Now the walk is really beautiful, all the way to Grinsdale. Trees grow in profusion on the steep river bank, and the blue river below gleams up through their branches.
On the opposite bank a ploughman was cheering on his horses, and fishers were spreading out their nets to dry.
At a bend in the stream, Grinsdale came into view, and soon the path entered a delicious fir-plantation, with the resinous smell brought out by the hot sun. Two men carrying huge sacks of firewood reminded me again of the coal-strike.
Just about here the Vallum and the Wall begin to diverge, the Wall following the river to Grinsdale, and the Vallum striking straight across the lower ground through Millbeck to Kirkandrews.
The railway-line to Silloth comes very close to the river here; in fact, the two have been running more or less alongside all the way from Rattlingstones, but I never knew a river so clever in hiding itself as the Eden. A traveller by train to Silloth would not guess he was quite close to a large river, so shyly does it conceal itself behind its steep southern bank.
After flowing in a northerly direction towards Grinsdale, it makes a sharp right-angled turn just at the village, and flows eastward past the church.
Grinsdale is a very pretty village, standing high up on this loop of the Eden, with the gardens of the houses sloping steeply down to the water. It seemed half asleep as I reached it. I came out into the road by a farm-house, making a mental note for future use of the sign it displayed: "Aerated Waters." I met no one in the village street but a farmer in his shirt-sleeves, who took his pipe out of his mouth to ejaculate, "Hot!" I took the opportunity before he put it in again to ask about the Roman Wall. He said he had heard there was a bit standing near the church, but he had never seen it. So I turned off to the right, into fields which led to the church, following the bend of the river.
It seemed hotter and quieter than ever. A swan was standing asleep on one leg on the gravelly flat by the water's edge. In the churchyard the rooks were cawing drowsily, and dropped dead branches on me as I passed. It is a tiny church, with a tiny tower, all rough cast, and it stands on the very brink of the steep river bank. It is protected on the river-side by a strong stone wall into which Wall-stones have been built. A breakwater, also containing Wall-stones, runs down into the river, to protect the church wall. But as for Wall itself, I saw I was quite off the track.
Still, I was not sorry to sit and rest for a while in the cool of the churchyard.
On the opposite bank of the river, where it had encroached on the land, men were busy sinking piles—long, long rows of them—and bringing up loads of brushwood to build up the bank, and prevent further inroads.