CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A proper escape from London motorcycle escapes with roads worth waking up for. A 697 km loop that starts and ends near Horsted Keynes, about 9 h 49 of riding. On the way it passes Scenic stretch near Reading, near Buckingham and in Thorpe le Soken. near Storrington is the high point. The line favours views over speed.
Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did. Water arrives beside the road and stays for 59 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
Next is High point near Storrington.
You top out here; the road stops climbing. Next is Scenic stretch near Reading.
about 154 km into the recorded legs you reach Scenic stretch near Reading. Next is Photo stop near Buckingham.
Buckingham is a small, handsome market town in the north of the county that bears its name, wrapped in a loop of the river Great Ouse. Its centre is a pleasing jumble of Georgian brick, coaching inns and a castellated old gaol that now houses a little museum. The town also has the distinction of being home to the University of Buckingham, the first independent university in Britain, founded in the 1970s.
Read the complete Photo stop near Buckingham write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Photo stop near Buckingham, about halfway. Next is London motorcycle escapes return.
From the top of Richmond Hill, the Thames bends below you through meadows and trees, and on a clear day you can see far across the river valley towards Windsor. This view is so admired that it was protected by an Act of Parliament in 1902, the only view in England with that honour, and painters like Turner and Reynolds came here to capture it. It is a fine place to end a long day, looking back towards the west where you have been.
The lanes around Horsted Keynes and Forest Row run along the edge of Ashdown Forest, the great sandy heath in East Sussex that A. A. Milne turned into the Hundred Acre Wood. He lived at nearby Hartfield, and his son Christopher Robin played here with the toys that became Winnie the Pooh. The forest itself is not a forest in the modern sense; the word meant a royal hunting ground, and the land is largely open heathland with gorse, heather, bracken and clumps of Scots pine, a rare habitat that is looked after by grazing. Nightjars and Dartford warblers live there, and in July the heather turns purple.