Do not expect a great stone wall here. Near Brampton, on the stretch running out toward the A6071, Hadrian's Wall is mostly a matter of earthworks and imagination: a line in a field, a softened ditch, the long parallel banks of the vallum to the south. In this western sector the wall was originally built of turf and timber before being rebuilt in stone, and centuries of farmers and builders carried off the dressed stones for barns and churches. What survives is listed as part of the UNESCO Frontiers of the Roman Empire, and once your eye tunes in, you start seeing the line everywhere.
The vallum is the most puzzling part. It is a broad flat-bottomed ditch with mounds on either side, running behind the wall, and it seems to have marked the military zone, a boundary between the army and the civilian world, rather than a defence against enemies to the north. Walking it on a misty morning with sheep looking on, you understand how much this frontier was about control and administration as much as war.
Brampton is a small market town of four thousand that played a part in a much later conflict: in 1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie stayed here while his Jacobite army besieged Carlisle, and the city's surrender was accepted in the town. Nearby, Lanercost Priory, founded in the twelfth century and partly built with stone from the Roman wall, is a beautiful ruin by the river Irthing. Carlisle, eleven kilometres west, has a medieval castle and cathedral and was a fortress town for centuries on the edge of the Anglo-Scottish border wars.
The riding is gentle and green, with narrow lanes between hedges and dry-stone walls, rolling hills to the north toward the Bewcastle fells and the busy A69 cutting through the valley to the south. The lanes can be muddy and slippery, with farm traffic, and the weather changes fast: drizzle, sun and wind all in an hour. Brampton has fuel, a few cafés and pubs, and Carlisle has everything. A pot of tea and a bacon roll will get you going, and if you are staying, the local ales are worth it.