Maryport
A Georgian harbour town on the Solway with Roman roots: the Senhouse Roman Museum, the fort of Alauna and long sunset promenades.
Maryport is a small harbour town at the mouth of the River Ellen, where the Cumbrian coast turns north towards the Solway. It was built as a coal port in the eighteenth century and named after the wife of its founder, Humphrey Senhouse, but its history goes much further back.
On the cliff above the town is the site of the Roman fort of Alauna, part of the coastal defences that extended Hadrian's Wall down the Cumbrian shore. The Senhouse Roman Museum beside it holds one of the largest collections of Roman altars in Britain, and a replica wooden watchtower gives a view over the fort and the sea. Down by the harbour, the Maryport Maritime Museum, in a former pub, covers the town's seafaring past, and there is an aquarium on the quay.
The promenade and the harbour are the places to be at sunset, when the sun drops into the Solway and the hills of Dumfries and Galloway glow across the water. The Hadrian's Cycleway and the England Coast Path both pass through. The town's grid of Georgian streets climbs the hill from the harbour to the fort site, so it is easy to walk from the quay to the Roman museum and back.
Maryport is quiet and some of its centre is run down, but it is friendly and refreshingly uncommercial. Allow a couple of hours for the museums and harbour, and combine it with Cockermouth or the Solway Coast.