I painted a picture of it in August, when hay-making was going on. To our southern eyes, the method of carting hay in these parts seems {157} very slow and laborious. The hay-wain is dispensed with altogether. Each hay-cock, or "pike," as they call them, is dragged separately, by means of chains and a windlass, on to a flat cart with low iron wheels, called a "bogie." The trundling of the iron wheels of the bogie on the stony roads becomes a very familiar sound in the hay-season. We timed the work as I sat painting on the hill, and we found it took three men one and three-quarter hours to bring in one pike and unload it, though it came from only two fields away! They call the process "leading" hay. The hilly character of the ground, no doubt, accounts for the method employed. Continuing my walk, I crossed the little wooden bridge over the Tipalt, and then bore round to the left, past cottages, keeping now alongside the tawny little river, a true tributary of the "tawny Tyne." A heron flew low down across my path, and dived between the low bushes on the river bank quite close to me. I peeped through them, and there he was, standing majestically on a stone in the middle of the river, fishing, looking very beautiful with his blue-grey plumage and dull yellow legs. Soon I came to the railway; the Wall is quite lost in these low-lying fields, and one has to cross the railway by the only path, almost on the site of the Vallum. Passing a row of new cottages, called Thirlwall View, I came out into the road {158} leading to Gilsland, and now I could see the Vallum in the fields across the road. I entered the nearest field-gate, and was now almost on the site of the Wall again, as far as Wallend Farm. Then the Wall-ditch appeared again, very conspicuous indeed, of great size and interest. I pursued it through grassy meadows, which seemed to be all ditch and rampart, and over stone walls, till I came to a thick group of trees beside a stream. Here were the farm-houses of Chapel House and Foul Town. A troop of young black cattle saw in me a hope of getting through the farm-gate, and followed me closely, even licking my hands as I opened the gate! But they did not get through. I could not find the "Hadrian" stone at Chapel House which Dr. Bruce refers to, and they could tell me nothing of it at the farm; but I understand it has been taken to the Black Gate Museum, Newcastle. I crossed a bridge over the stream and continued westward, Orchard House, Gilsland and the Shaws Hotel coming into view on the green slopes on the right.