Great Chesters, known to the Romans as Aesica, sits high on the Whin Sill ridge in Northumberland, the dark dolerite crag that Hadrian's Wall uses as its backbone for much of its central length. The fort is small, a modest rectangle of grassy banks and a few stone foundations in a field, and it is easy to drive past without noticing, which is part of its appeal. What you get is the setting: a wide skyline, the wall visible as a rough stone line running east and west, and the sort of silence that only comes from a long way from any town.
Haltwhistle is the closest settlement, about two and a half kilometres away as the crow flies, a small market town with a few shops and a petrol station. Hexham, about twenty kilometres or so from here, is the larger town with the bigger supermarkets, an abbey and plenty of cafés. In this part of the country the villages are small and spaced out, so it pays to top up in one of the towns before a long afternoon on the moor roads.
The riding is the best reason to come. The Military Road, the B6318, was built after the 1745 Jacobite rising so that troops could move quickly across the country, and it runs straight and rolling along the line of the wall, with a series of crests that give views north over the Northumberland National Park and the empty moorland beyond. The old road builders even used the Roman wall as a quarry, which is why so much of it vanished. Surfaces are mostly good but the road is fast and straight enough to tempt people, so keep an eye out for speed cameras and the occasional police presence, as well as farm traffic and lambs near the verges in spring.
The weather up here is changeable, with clouds rolling in from the west and the wind often strong enough to bother a light bike. Visibility can drop quickly in low cloud, and in winter the road can ice over. The best conditions are on a clear morning in late spring or early autumn, when the light picks out every ridge and the sheep are the only traffic.
Take a minute to stand by the field, look east along the wall, and think about the soldiers posted here, many of them recruited from distant parts of the empire, stuck on a cold escarpment with a long view and little else to do.