The Solway Firth is shallow and wide on its Scottish side, and between Annan and Gretna the land is flat and green, with sheep and cattle, field boundaries lined with hawthorn, and long views across the water to the Lake District hills.
Roman armies marched through Scotland from the first century, and Annandale was one of their roads to the north. The camps that line it were built for a single night, then abandoned, and the farmers have long since ploughed most of them flat. It is a matter of faith more than sight, but it is worth knowing that the same low ground has carried soldiers, drovers and now lorries for two thousand years.
The region has more recent and stranger stories. At Eastriggs, a few kilometres east, the First World War cordite factory known as HM Factory Gretna was one of the largest in the world, nine miles long, and the women who worked there handled a paste the workers called the Devil's Porridge, which has a museum today. Near Gretna, in 1915, the worst rail accident in British history happened at Quintinshill, when troop trains and an express collided and some two hundred and twenty people died. Gretna Green, just over the border, was famous for runaway marriages, because Scottish law allowed couples to wed without parental consent, and you can still be married at the old blacksmith's shop. Annan, a small river town, was the birthplace of no less a figure than the essayist Thomas Carlyle, who went to school there.
The riding is flat and unhurried. The B721 and the minor roads between Annan and Gretna run straight between hedges, with a few bends and speed limits dropping through villages, and the A75 and the nearby motorway carry heavy traffic. In wind and rain the firth feels bleak, but in clear, still evenings the sunsets over the water are splendid. Spring and early autumn are best, though midsummer midges can be bothersome. Annan, with nearly nine thousand people, has fuel, a supermarket and cafes.