The small Roman fort at Drumburgh sat on a low rise above the Solway marshes, guarding a stretch of Hadrian's Wall where the frontier ran along the edge of the firth towards its western end at Bowness. Nothing much survives of the fort itself, but its stones did not go far. Drumburgh Castle, a fortified farmhouse built in the sixteenth century by the Dacre family, is clearly made from reused Roman masonry, and you can still pick out dressed blocks and even the odd carved fragment set into its walls.
This was hard border country long after the legions left. The lands around the Solway were raided back and forth by the reiver families for centuries, which explains the bastle houses and fortified farms scattered across the flat landscape. A short ride east at Burgh by Sands, a monument on the marsh marks where Edward I, the Hammer of the Scots, died in 1307 while waiting to lead yet another army across the firth. The church at Burgh itself is built within the outline of another Roman fort and has a defensive tower for sheltering villagers.
The road through Drumburgh is a single lane across open, flat ground, more like a polder in the Netherlands than anything English. Glasson and Port Carlisle are just along the shore, and the road between them can be flooded at high tide, so check the tide if you are heading west. It is not a place for speed; it is a place for slow riding with the visor up, smelling salt and cut grass, watching curlews and lapwings lift off the marsh. In a westerly gale it is hard work, and after rain the verges collect mud from farm traffic.
Eastriggs and Annan show up as near neighbours on a map, but they are on the Scottish side with water in between. By road, Carlisle is your town, about twenty minutes east, with fuel, food and the castle and cathedral if you have time. A small village pub is the most you can hope for out here, and not every village has one, so carry water. If you are following the Wall Path, this flat stretch is where walkers tend to slow down and look out over the firth, and it rewards riders who do the same.