Rudchester, known to the Romans as Vindobala, was the fourth fort along Hadrian's Wall counting from Wallsend at the eastern end. It sat astride the Wall on high ground west of Newcastle, with a garrison of around five hundred soldiers. Today, there is nothing to see above ground but fields and the bumps and hollows of buried walls, with a farm nearby. Excavations in the twentieth century found traces of a temple to Mithras just outside the fort, one of several on the Wall, where soldiers worshipped the god in a dark, cave-like building.
The road that runs past, the B6318, is known as the Military Road. It was built after the Jacobite rising of 1745, when General Wade's troops struggled to move from Newcastle to Carlisle to stop Bonnie Prince Charlie's army. The new road, completed in the 1750s, followed the line of the Wall for long stretches, and in many places it was built directly on top of it, using the Roman stones as foundation and quarry. It is one of the great ironies of British history that the road built to defend the realm destroyed so much of the realm's most famous monument.
A little to the east, at Heddon-on-the-Wall, a good length of the wall survives, several courses high and about three metres thick, showing the original broad gauge. It's worth a stop. Heddon is a village with a pub and a shop, and Wylam, close by in the Tyne valley, was the birthplace of George Stephenson, the railway pioneer; his cottage still stands by the river.
Riding the Military Road westward from here is a classic. It runs straight for long stretches, following the Wall's relentless logic, but it rises and falls over the hills with blind crests that can launch the unwary, and traffic includes tourists who stop suddenly to look at ruins. Further west, beyond Chollerford, the road enters the most dramatic section of the Wall, along the crags of the Whin Sill. The weather is changeable, and the wind can be strong on the exposed ridges.
Prudhoe, a few kilometres south in the Tyne valley, has fuel and supermarkets, and Newcastle is close. Heddon has a pub for lunch.