But I had never seen the Solway.
And then, resting on a rocky
ledge above Crag Lough, I sudden-
ly realized, what I had long con-
cealed from myself, that I was ill
.. and so home, and spent a week
But after I had been up two days
(for I was determined to go), I was
taken to Blindburn in the Cheviots,
north-west of Alwinton, and after
lunch I walked, over the old Roman
Dere Street, down the Cottonhope
Burn to Byrness, over the fells by
the Blackhope Nick to Kielder ..
on again next morning up the Lewis-
burn valley, and over to Becastle
Fells, a killing struggle, over peat-
hags and bogs and clefts, making ev-
ery mile as two; and at last, from
Sighty Crag, I saw it, a sheet of
twinkling water and a long reach of
desolate sand, the Solway Firth;
and at the same time I heard the
bubbling of a spring nearby among
the moss, and slaked my thirst
with its cool dark water; for my
throat was parched with the long
weary climb. After which I felt
as I daresay the Israelites felt
when, from a hilltop, they viewed
the Promised Land, that it wasn't
very different from anywhere else;
still, it was something to be out
of the wilderness.
.. and dropping lightly down the
fells I met a shepherd, the first
human face I had seen for eighteen
miles, and so to Bewcastle, where
I found, against all probability
(for it is a lonely steading) an-
other man, in the middle of a field,
delivering lime from a lorry. So I
asked him for a lift, and he took
me to Brampton, whence I gradually
found my way home. He drove a lime-
lorry now, he said, but he had once
lived far away in Northumberland,
and had spent his childhood in the
village of Powburn, where his uncle
was the policeman. So I told him
that I had been born in the parish
of Powburn, in Glanton, and from
that time we were intimate friends.
Lord Dacre of Glanton
The Solway Firth
[fragment]
June, 1945
The Wartime Journals
Richard Davenport-Hines
editor
op. cit.
