CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
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Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Birmingham it runs 334 km to Birmingham; allow about 4 h 25 of riding. It goes by way of Ironbridge Gorge, Derwent Valley Mills, back through Derwent Valley Mills and back through Ironbridge Gorge. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Birmingham claims more miles of canal than Venice, a boast that is almost certainly true and that tells you something about the city. It grew in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a place that made things, buttons, guns, jewellery, steam engines, and the canals were the lanes that carried the raw metal in and the finished goods out. The thinkers of the Lunar Society, among them Matthew Boulton, James Watt and Joseph Priestley, met here at full moon so they could walk home by its light, and their dinner conversations helped shape the age of industry.
Read the complete Birmingham write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Birmingham is where the day begins. Next is Ironbridge Gorge.
An iron bridge does not sound like much until you realise it was the first of its kind. In 1779, over the River Severn in Shropshire, the world's first major cast-iron bridge was completed, spanning thirty metres in a single semicircular arch, assembled with joints borrowed from carpentry. It was designed by Thomas Farnolls Pritchard and built by Abraham Darby III, whose grandfather, Abraham Darby I, had pioneered smelting iron with coke at nearby Coalbrookdale in 1709. That innovation lit the fuse of the Industrial Revolution, and the gorge that holds the works became one of its birthplaces. UNESCO listed the site in 1986.
Read the complete Ironbridge Gorge write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ironbridge Gorge comes up 41 km in. Next is Ironbridge Gorge.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ironbridge Gorge write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
83 km in you reach Ironbridge Gorge. Next is Derwent Valley Mills.
The first factory in the modern sense stood at Cromford, in a narrow valley in Derbyshire, and the man who built it was a barber from Preston. Richard Arkwright's cotton mill of 1771 was the first to spin cotton with water power on a large scale, and it set a pattern that spread to the Midlands, Lancashire and across the world. The Derwent Valley Mills, the series of mills and villages that stretch from Cromford down to Derby, were listed by UNESCO in 2001 as the birthplace of the factory system.
Read the complete Derwent Valley Mills write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Derwent Valley Mills, about halfway.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Derwent Valley Mills write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Derwent Valley Mills sits at 165 km, about halfway. Next is back through Derwent Valley Mills.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Derwent Valley Mills write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Derwent Valley Mills comes up 206 km in. Next is back through Ironbridge Gorge.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ironbridge Gorge write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
248 km in you reach back through Ironbridge Gorge. Next is back through Ironbridge Gorge.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ironbridge Gorge write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Ironbridge Gorge, late in the day. Next is Birmingham.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Birmingham write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 334 km.
Birmingham → Ironbridge Gorge is 57 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ironbridge Gorge → Derwent Valley Mills is 108 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Derwent Valley Mills → back through Ironbridge Gorge is 108 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Ironbridge Gorge → Birmingham is 57 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.