It was getting very hot when I left Condercum, and this same tarred surface made walking rather trying, for in many places it had become soft and sticky with the heat, and not even the path on either side had been left free. At some points the very gutters ran with tar. There was no shade from trees overhead, except at long intervals; it was "the hottest day of the year," as the papers said next day, though as yet it wanted an hour or so of noon. But I trudged on, inspired by my quest, and well knowing that my first day was bound to be my worst day, compelled, as I was, to keep to the hard high road. For 19 miles out of Newcastle {47} the road runs mainly upon the foundations of the Wall. A steep hill, Benwell Hill, leads down from Condercum to East Denton. It was on this hill that John Wesley, with his step-daughter and grand-children, had a narrow escape from injury or death. The horses took fright, and ran away, dashing through a closed gate as if it had been a cobweb, and then across a corn-field. The little girls were terrified, but Wesley writes: "I told them, 'Nothing will hurt you; do not be afraid'; feeling no more fear or care than if I had been sitting in my study." The horses stopped suddenly, just on the brink of a precipice. At the bottom of the hill, the road crosses Denton Burn, once a pretty stream, but now dry; I saw only a dirty green puddle in which a dirty brown sparrow was trying to bathe. Just before the burn, on the left, a stile leads to the very first piece of Wall which appears above ground. It is only a few paces south of the road, and has been enclosed by a wooden fence, but a mere fraction of the fence was left; the rest had apparently been stolen for firewood. This piece of Wall is 9½ feet wide. When Hutton saw it, it was 36 feet long, and had an apple-tree growing on it. There is much less left now, and even the dead trunk of the apple-tree has gone. Mounting the opposite hill, I soon came to Denton {48} Hall, a ghost-haunted old house on the right, built of Wall-stones in 1503 by the monks of Tynemouth, as a summer residence. A few sculptured stones from the Wall are to be seen in the hall. Mrs. Elizabeth Montague, "The Queen of the Blue Stocking," lived there from 1760, and entertained many distinguished guests. Now I felt that I had at last got beyond Newcastle. The fields were golden with buttercups; the may-trees were masses of pearly white; beneath them the cattle stood drowsily in the heat; and away in the distance the hills south of the Tyne lost themselves in a blue haze. Opposite Denton Hall, the core of the Wall can be seen, and the Vallum, running along the bottom of the meadow. {49} CHAPTER VI WALBOTTLE TO EAST WALLHOUSES The first indication of a mile-castle I noted in a field on the left, just before reaching the lodge of West Denton House. It was just a daisy-covered mound, as I saw it, with cows lying about on it.