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.
From Annan it runs 286 km to Annan; allow about 4 h 36 of riding. It goes by way of Swarthy Hill North tower 20b, The English Lake District, Ravenglass Roman fort bath-house and back through The English Lake District. 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 34 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
Check the pass is open before you commit to it.
Out on the Cumbrian shore of the Solway Firth, at the far western end of Hadrian's frontier, Biglands is a farmhouse name attached to the site of a small Roman milefortlet, one of the posts that carried the Wall's chain of defences down the coast once the stone curtain itself had stopped at Bowness. There is very little to see above ground; the fortlet was excavated and then returned to the grass. What you come for is the setting and the sense of standing at the edge of an empire, looking across a few kilometres of mud and water at Scotland.
Read the complete Biglands House write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Biglands House is where the day begins. Next is Swarthy Hill North tower 20b.
Along the Cumbrian coast between Silloth and Maryport, the Roman frontier did not end when Hadrian's stone Wall reached Bowness. A chain of milefortlets and towers continued down the shore, watching the Solway for raiders arriving by boat, and Tower 20b near Swarthy Hill is one of them. It was a small stone watchtower, probably manned by a handful of soldiers, and what remains is a low outline in the turf above the beach. You come for the context and the view across the water rather than for the masonry.
Read the complete Swarthy Hill North tower 20b write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Swarthy Hill North tower 20b comes up about 41 km into the recorded legs. Next is The English Lake District.
Wordsworth wandered lonely as a cloud round here, and anybody who has ridden the Lake District on a wet bank holiday will understand the appeal of being lonely. The English Lake District, listed by UNESCO in 2017 as a cultural landscape, is a compact knot of mountains, lakes and valleys in Cumbria, shaped by glaciers and then by centuries of sheep farming, slate quarrying and, from the late eighteenth century, by poets, painters and tourists who came looking for the sublime.
Read the complete The English Lake District write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 109 km into the recorded legs you reach The English Lake District. Next is Ravenglass Roman fort bath-house.
Walls Castle is the odd name for a Roman bath house, and the building still stands to a height of about four metres, one of the tallest Roman structures in northern England. It stood outside the fort of Glannoventa at Ravenglass, a harbour station at the meeting of three rivers, the Irt, the Mite and the Esk, and in the dry shelter of the dunes it has survived because its walls were thick and well built. You can walk around it on a short path from the village, and see niches and a doorway in the thick walls. The fort itself lies mostly under farmland and the railway.
Read the complete Ravenglass Roman fort bath-house write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ravenglass Roman fort bath-house, about halfway. Next is back through The English Lake District.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The English Lake District write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The English Lake District sits at 160 km, about halfway. Next is back through Swarthy Hill North tower 20b.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Swarthy Hill North tower 20b write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Swarthy Hill North tower 20b comes up about 246 km into the recorded legs. Next is Biglands House.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Biglands House write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Biglands House closes the day.
Biglands House → Swarthy Hill North tower 20b is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Swarthy Hill North tower 20b → The English Lake District is 68 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The English Lake District → Ravenglass Roman fort bath-house is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ravenglass Roman fort bath-house → back through The English Lake District is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The English Lake District → back through Swarthy Hill North tower 20b is 66 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Swarthy Hill North tower 20b → Biglands House is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.