Wall mile zero is where Hadrian's Wall began, or ended, depending on which way you are riding, and it is in the most unlikely setting you could imagine: Wallsend, on the north bank of the Tyne, among terraced streets and the cranes of what was once one of the great shipbuilding rivers of the world. The town's name says it all. Here stood Segedunum, the easternmost fort of the wall, and its foundations have been laid bare beside the road, with a viewing tower that lets you see the whole plan at once, barracks, headquarters and gates, like a diagram on the ground.
A short stretch of wall has been reconstructed nearby, together with a Roman bath house, which gives a sense of what the frontier actually looked like before it was robbed for building stone. From here the wall ran some seventy-three miles west to Bowness-on-Solway, built in the 120s on the orders of the emperor Hadrian, who wanted, in his biographer's words, to separate Romans from barbarians.
The other history here is industrial. The Swan Hunter yards built ships for more than a century, including the liner Mauretania, which held the Blue Riband for crossing the Atlantic for twenty years. Shipbuilding has largely gone, but the scale of the river and its quays still impresses, and the Tyne bridges upstream in Newcastle, especially the Tyne Bridge and the tilting Millennium Bridge, are worth a look on the way through.
As a ride start, it is urban and slow at first. You will deal with traffic, roundabouts, bus lanes and a fair bit of stop-start before the city releases you westwards. The reward is the B6318, the Military Road, which General Wade built after the 1745 rising and which runs straight along the line of the wall for miles further on, roller-coastering over the crests with wide northern views. Wallsend has fuel, shops and plenty of cafes; Newcastle has everything else, including a famously lively evening. Grab a stottie, the local flat bread roll, before you go.