The South Tyne valley below Haydon Bridge is one of the best places in England to understand why the Romans chose this line. To the north rises the long whinstone crag, the Whin Sill, a hard dark rock that stands up in a series of cliffs facing north, and along its crest Hadrian's Wall once ran. South of it lies the valley, with the river, the old road called the Stanegate and a string of forts. A defended settlement and signal station here would have been part of this web, sitting on high ground where a fire or flag could pass news along the line in minutes.
The wall was built from about AD 122 and garrisoned for nearly three centuries, and its stones have had a long afterlife. When the military road was built across the country after the 1745 Jacobite rising, General Wade's engineers used the wall as a quarry and as a foundation, which is why the B6318 runs so straight across the high ground. The cliffs, the sheep and the hard sky make it feel like the end of the world, and in a sense, for the Romans, it was.
For motorcyclists the area is a delight, though not for technical riding. The roads are open, rolling and fast in places, with long views north over moor and forest. The B6318 has a line of dips and crests, and there are tight bends where it follows the crags. Sheep stray onto the road without warning, and the weather can flip from sunshine to hill fog in a quarter of an hour. Surfaces are generally good but frost-damaged in places, and in winter the high road is sometimes closed by snow.
Haydon Bridge is a small village with a pub and a shop; Hexham, fifteen kilometres to the east, is a handsome market town with an abbey, fuel, supermarkets and a good choice of cafes. The nearby fort at Vindolanda has given the world the Roman writing tablets, including a famous birthday party invitation, and its museum is worth the stop.