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 Haydon Bridge it runs 143 km to Haydon Bridge; allow about 2 h 29 of riding. The stops in between: Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the fiel, Watchclose Roman temporary camp, Drumburgh Roman fort and Hadrian's Wall be and back through Watchclose Roman temporary camp. The line favours views over speed.
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 29 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
Look for a faint rectangle in the rough grass north of the Military Road, a few kilometres west of Chollerford, and you will have found Brown Dikes, one of a cluster of Roman temporary camps on the high ground above the North Tyne. Nothing stands here, no walls or gates, only low earthworks that the grazing sheep have softened over nearly two thousand years. But these camps are among the most evocative traces of the Roman army in Britain, because they mark where soldiers actually slept and worked while the frontier was being built and garrisoned.
Read the complete Brown Dikes Roman temporary camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Brown Dikes Roman temporary camp is where the day begins. Next is Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the fiel.
Around Haltwhistle the wall country becomes the landscape everyone imagines: the Whin Sill, a long ridge of hard volcanic dolerite, rears up in a series of cliffs facing north, and the Romans used it as a ready-made rampart, running their stone wall along the very top. Between the crags and the road the vallum ditch runs across the fields as a broad, clear trench, and from any high point you can see the whole military system laid out: crag, wall, road and ditch side by side.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the fiel write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the fiel comes up about 20 km into the recorded legs. Next is Watchclose Roman temporary camp.
East of Carlisle, between the villages of Brampton and Wetheral, the countryside rolls gently towards the Pennines, with green fields, hedges and patches of woodland. Somewhere in these fields lie the faint traces of Watchclose, a Roman temporary camp, one of many marching camps built by soldiers on campaign or during the construction of Hadrian's Wall. These camps were enclosed by a ditch and bank and used for a night or a season, and today they are often visible only from the air or as slight undulations in the grass. Watchclose is part of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage site.
Read the complete Watchclose Roman temporary camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 42 km into the recorded legs you reach Watchclose Roman temporary camp. Next is Drumburgh Roman fort and Hadrian's Wall be.
The small Roman fort at Drumburgh sat on a low rise above the Solway marshes, guarding a stretch of Hadrian's Wall where the frontier ran along the edge of the firth towards its western end at Bowness. Nothing much survives of the fort itself, but its stones did not go far. Drumburgh Castle, a fortified farmhouse built in the sixteenth century by the Dacre family, is clearly made from reused Roman masonry, and you can still pick out dressed blocks and even the odd carved fragment set into its walls.
Read the complete Drumburgh Roman fort and Hadrian's Wall be write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Drumburgh Roman fort and Hadrian's Wall be, about halfway. Next is back through Watchclose Roman temporary camp.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Watchclose Roman temporary camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Watchclose Roman temporary camp sits at 107 km, about halfway. Next is back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the fiel.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the fiel write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the fiel comes up about 124 km into the recorded legs. Next is Brown Dikes Roman temporary camp.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Brown Dikes Roman temporary camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Brown Dikes Roman temporary camp closes the day.
Brown Dikes Roman temporary camp → Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the fiel is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the fiel → Watchclose Roman temporary camp is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Watchclose Roman temporary camp → Drumburgh Roman fort and Hadrian's Wall be is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Drumburgh Roman fort and Hadrian's Wall be → back through Watchclose Roman temporary camp is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Watchclose Roman temporary camp → back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the fiel is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the fiel → Brown Dikes Roman temporary camp is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.