Brampton is the kind of small Cumbrian market town that riders pass on the A69 without a second look, which is a pity, because the country just north and east of it is some of the richest Roman and medieval ground on the whole Wall. The site of the Roman bath house lies close to the town, near the remains of an early fort on the Stanegate, and like most bath houses it sat outside the fort walls, where its furnaces and the risk of fire could do less harm. Little or nothing stands above ground, so come for the setting rather than the stones.
Bath houses were essential kit for a Roman garrison. Soldiers moved from cold rooms to warm to hot, scraping themselves clean with oil and a strigil, gambling and gossiping as they went. On a damp grey day in the north, with the wind coming off the Pennines, you understand why they bothered to build them in stone and keep the fires going.
Brampton itself has an octagonal Moot Hall in the market place and a long memory of the Jacobite rising of 1745. Bonnie Prince Charlie stayed in the town when Carlisle surrendered to his army, and after the rising was crushed, Jacobite prisoners were hanged on the Capon Tree on the edge of town, where a memorial still stands. Three kilometres away, Lanercost Priory, founded by Augustinian canons in the twelfth century, sits in a quiet meadow by the River Irthing; Edward I spent months there, ill, during his campaigns against the Scots.
For riding, avoid the A69 when you can. It is fast, busy with lorries and has more than its share of police attention. The minor road north-east past Lanercost to Banks and Birdoswald is the one you want: narrow, twisting, climbing onto the Wall with views across the Irthing gorge, and short enough that you can do it twice. Talkin Tarn, just south of town, is a glacial lake with a country park where a cup of tea by the water is easy to arrange.
Brampton has fuel, a supermarket, pubs and cafés, which makes it a sensible place to refill before the emptier stretch of the Wall heading east. Carlisle is fourteen kilometres away for anything bigger.