Camboglanna is the Roman name of the fort at Castlesteads, and the sound of it has a ring that the present quiet farmland does not. The fort sat on a ridge above the River Irthing, not far from Brampton, and it was one of the garrison posts on the western part of the wall. Little survives above ground, because the site was built over by a country house and gardens in the eighteenth century, but the line of the wall and the vallum, the great ditch behind it, can be traced across the fields nearby.
The western end of Hadrian's Wall is different from the high crags of the central section. Here the wall was originally built of turf rather than stone, because there was no suitable rock near the surface, and only later was it rebuilt in masonry. The landscape is gentler, with wooded valleys, red sandstone, small farms and the broad flat plain of the Solway to the north. The lower, softer land made the wall a less dramatic thing, but it is a more peaceful one.
Brampton is the town to know, a small market place with an octagonal moot hall and a few good pubs, and nearby is Lanercost Priory, a ruined Augustinian house founded in the twelfth century and built partly from stone taken from the wall. Edward I stayed at Lanercost for months in 1306 and 1307, in the final stage of his campaign against the Scots. Birdoswald, a few miles east, is the best of the forts on this stretch, set on a cliff above the Irthing.
The riding in this corner of Cumbria is excellent. Narrow lanes run between high hedges, with farm gates and dry-stone walls, and you drop into small valleys where streams run over red rock. Surfaces vary, with mud and gravel after wet weather, and on single-track lanes you need to look well ahead. Spring is lovely, with blossom and lambs, and autumn has a lot of golden light.
Brampton has four thousand people and offers pumps, shops and cafés, and Carlisle, fourteen kilometres away, is the large town for everything. Carry a waterproof, because rain is common.