Haltwhistle likes to call itself the centre of Britain, a claim measured with some creativity, and the town of nearly four thousand people is a good base for the middle section of Hadrian's Wall, where the frontier runs along the crags of the Whin Sill. The temporary camps in this label are Roman marching camps, the overnight enclosures that an army threw up with a ditch and a rampart each time it halted, and several are scattered across the fields south of the Wall. Almost all of them show only as faint rectangles in grass when the low sun catches them, and the ones near Markham Cottage fall in that category, so do not expect masonry or signs. What you get is a rare sense of how many soldiers once moved through this valley.
Aerial surveys and dry summers have revealed dozens of these camps in Northumberland, and they hint at the scale of campaigns long before the Wall was built, when the Romans were pushing north into Scotland and returning each winter. The Stanegate, a Roman road that ran between Corbridge and Carlisle, passes just south of here, and it was the frontier line before Hadrian ordered the Wall in about AD 122. To a historian that is the interesting layering: road first, then Wall, then ditch and vallum, then forts.
For a rider the area is a treasure, though the prize is the landscape. From Haltwhistle you can head east on the B6318, the Military Road, or along the lanes towards the crags, where long gradients and quick bends take you over the ridge with the Wall clinging to the edge. The surface varies, with some bumpy patches and the odd cattle grid, and sheep wander across without warning. Fog can sit on the ridge when the valley is clear, so check the sky. Spring and early summer give the best light, and the heather on the moors turns purple in August.
Haltwhistle has fuel and a handful of shops and cafes, and Hexham, twenty-odd kilometres east, has more of everything. The railway station on the Tyne Valley line is a useful sign that you are near civilisation. Bring a flask on the ridge, where there are few facilities, and note that the car parks at the main sites charge fees and sometimes limit bikes. Pasties and a pint of local bitter are the usual reward at the end of a day.