There used to be a castle, known as Sewingshields Castle, in the fields to the north, built there, it is supposed, to defend this pass of Cat Gate. The field where it stood is still known as "The Castle."
Continuing along the crags, I soon came to the site of another mile-castle. All along here the Wall is in a very ruinous condition, but one can follow closely the mound which once was Wall.
Before leaving the Sewingshields region, we see ahead an important gap called Busy Gap.
Here the Wall bends nearly southward, in order to avoid Broomlee Lough (which laps the feet of Sewingshields Crags) and to make for the next line of crags.
Nothing but the foundations remain of the actual Wall, but stones are piled up roughly on them to make a field-boundary.
It is the interval between the end of Sewingshields Crags and the beginning of the Housesteads series which is known as "Busy Gap," for it was a very weak place on the Wall, and the enemy knew it. Besides digging the usual Wall-ditch across the gap, the Romans made an earthern rampart, triangular in form, as an additional protection. Camden says of this Gap in 1599:
"I could not with safetie take the full Survey of it for the ranke-robbers thereabout."
One evening when I was returning home from this spot, quite suddenly the mist came down, and blotted everything out. I could not even see the ground at my feet, and anyhow there is no path to follow. So the only thing I could do was to strike upwards until I came to the mound of the Wall on the top of the crags, and then to keep along its south side. After a while the mist lifted as suddenly as it had come down, and I found myself within a stone's-throw of the little plantation at Sewingshields.
It is no joke to be caught by a mist on these fells in the evening; they come down without any warning, and sometimes last for days.
Just beyond the grass-grown site of another mile-castle the platform of the fort of BORCOVICIUM comes into view, with the farm-house of Housesteads. All this time the Vallum can be seen to the left, traversing the low land between us and Wade's Road.