I soon came to Low Wall, the next farm, and now I began to have visions of a glass of milk with my lunch. It was very quiet in the farm-yard, and I guessed the household must be at dinner, and so it proved.
The door on which I knocked opened straight into the living-room, and remains of soup and potatoes were on the table, from which men and women were just rising.
Miss B——, the daughter, who answered my knock, insisted on taking me into the parlour to eat my lunch, and when she had fetched some milk, she sat and talked to me. She told me of their experiences during the war, how they had had refugee Belgians close to them, at Howgill—relays of Belgians, some quite nice, and others "a rough lot." These last used to catch and eat the blackbirds, besides sucking their eggs, and had made quite a stir in this quiet neighbourhood.
My lunch finished, she took me back to the living-room, and introduced me to her mother, a dear old lady of ninety-one. When I told her I was walking to Bowness, she at once began to recall a visit she had paid eighty years ago, when she had gone to stay at Peartree House, Bowness, on account of her health. She made the journey by canal, from Carlisle to Port Carlisle, and had evidently enjoyed the whole experience. This canal was only open from 1823 to 1854.
When I got up to go, Miss B—— popped on her sunbonnet and came with me. She showed me where a mile-castle had been excavated, in 1900, in one of their fields, north of the house.
In the field north of Dovecote, I thought I saw traces of a turret, but I could not be sure.
The core of the Wall is now clearly to be seen, all the way to the King Water, but both Wall and ditch disappeared in a field of young corn which slopes down to the water's edge.
The King Water flows from north to south at this point, right across the line of the Wall. As is so often the case with northern rivers, it has a very steep bank on one side, while the ground slopes gently down on the other. There is nothing to show how the Wall was carried across this stream, but I found it very easily fordable, by stepping-stones just where the Wall must have been. On this May day, the steep western bank was a riot of colour. The colour of the earth of the bank is red, almost pink, from the red sandstone; on it was growing a perfect blaze of yellow broom. With a deep blue sky overhead, and the fresh green of the grass and trees, the whole colour-scheme was very much inclined to be garish—not to say "Futurist"—in character!
I crossed the stream, and climbed the red bank, threading my way between the bushes of broom, from which the bees were raising a continuous drone. It was easy to pick up the Wall again on the top of the cliff; a great ash was growing just on the Wall, at the cliff's edge. On the right at this point a little stream runs into the King Water, forming a natural Wall-ditch. Broom and blue-bells made a harmony of blue and gold in its narrow gorge.