West of Newcastle, along the north bank of the Tyne, the line of Hadrian's Wall disappears under the suburbs and then pops up again in the villages of Heddon-on-the-Wall and Walbottle, and here, near the Mill Beck, the label points at something less famous than the Wall itself: the vallum. This was a great flat-bottomed ditch with mounds on either side, dug south of the Wall and running along its length, and it marked the rear boundary of the military zone. Nobody is entirely sure what it was for, but the usual view is that it was a barrier to control who approached the frontier from the Roman province behind it. Today, where it survives, it is a shallow, grassy trench, easy to miss unless you know to look for it.
Heddon-on-the-Wall, a village of about thirteen hundred people, has a stretch of the actual Wall, one of the longest in the east, with the foundation of a turret visible beside the lane. Newburn, a couple of kilometres away on the Tyne, is much bigger and has the fuel stations and shops, while Newcastle itself is just a few miles east. The land here is low and rolling, with farmland, hedgerows and the ridge of the Tyne valley behind, and from the higher fields you may catch the haze of the city.
For riding, the best road in the neighbourhood is the old Military Road, the B6318, which runs westward from Newcastle along the line of the Wall, though this stretch is nearer the city and busier. It was built after the Jacobite rising of 1745, when General Wade found he could not move troops quickly across the north, and sections of the Wall were quarried for its stone. The straight line beloved of the Romans is repeated by the road, with sudden dips and crests. Once you pass Heddon you start to feel the countryside open up.
Traffic is commuter-heavy on weekdays and the roads can be wet and greasy in autumn, with mud from farm vehicles. Bring waterproofs. A flask and a pasty are better than the village options, though there is a pub or two. The sensible time to come is a weekend morning in spring, when the light is clear and the lanes are empty enough to ride slowly.