The Solway Firth is one of Britain's great tidal estuaries, wide, shallow and quick. At low water, a vast expanse of sand and mud opens, and when the tide returns, it advances across the flats with astonishing speed. Pasture House lies on the English shore, on the Cardurnock peninsula, with the Scottish town of Annan visible across the water about six kilometres to the north. The Romans extended Hadrian's Wall defences down this coast, and Swarthy Hill milefortlet 21, on a neighbouring ride, is one of a chain of small forts that guarded against crossings.
The landscape is flat and wild, with salt marsh, raised bogs, grazing and long horizons. The Bowness Common mosses, a few kilometres inland, are among the best-preserved raised bogs in England, rich in sphagnum, dragonflies and sundews. In winter, thousands of barnacle geese from Svalbard arrive to graze the marshes, and their calls carry over the water. The Solway also supports haaf-netting, an old way of fishing with a long net held by a line of men standing in the tidal flow, a custom now practised by only a few.
A railway viaduct once crossed the firth here, the Solway Viaduct, opened in 1869 to carry iron ore between Cumberland and Scotland. It was battered by ice floes in the winter of 1881 and finally demolished in the 1930s, though its stumps are said to survive. Nothing of it can be crossed now, so to reach Annan you must drive around by Carlisle. Annan, with about nine thousand people, has fuel and shops, and Eastriggs is small.
The roads on the English side are quiet, flat and sometimes rough at the edges, with farm traffic and a few holiday visitors. Wind off the water can be fierce, and fog can roll in quickly. Check the tide tables if you go near the shore, because the flood is fast and dangerous. Spring and autumn are best for birds, and sunsets over the Solway, with the Scottish hills dark against the sky, are something to remember.