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 Camborne it runs 324 km to Camborne; allow about 5 h 05 of riding. The stops in between: St Just Mining District, Charlestown, Caradon Mining District and back through Charlestown. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Cornwall's mining history is told by its engine houses, and around Camborne and Redruth there are more of them than anywhere else. This was the richest square of country in the whole mining world in the nineteenth century, producing copper and then tin on a scale that made the district a global centre of mining technology. Engineers, pumps and steam engines were built here and exported to mines on every continent, and Cornish miners themselves, known as Cousin Jacks, emigrated to Australia, South Africa, Mexico and North America and took their skills with them.
Read the complete Camborne and Redruth Mining District write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Camborne and Redruth Mining District is where the day begins. Next is St Just Mining District.
Out at the very end of Cornwall, where the land runs out in granite cliffs above the Atlantic, the coast between St Just and Pendeen is studded with the ruined engine houses of tin and copper mines. Some of them stand right on the cliff edge, their tall chimneys silhouetted against the sea, and the shafts below ran out under the ocean floor, so deep that miners claimed they could hear boulders rolling on the seabed above them during storms. This is the St Just Mining District, one of the most dramatic parts of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage site.
Read the complete St Just Mining District write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
St Just Mining District comes up about 38 km into the recorded legs. Next is Charlestown.
Charlestown is a harbour carved out of a beach. In the 1790s, a local landowner called Charles Rashleigh built a port here, cutting a dock into the rock to ship copper ore and, above all, china clay from the pits around St Austell, and the village took his name. Little has changed since: the stone harbour walls, the lock gates, the Georgian cottages and the old warehouses survive almost intact, which is why the harbour is part of the UNESCO Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape and why film and TV crews love it. Tall ships often moor in the dock, and you may have seen it as a backdrop in more than one period drama.
Read the complete Charlestown write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 122 km into the recorded legs you reach Charlestown. Next is Caradon Mining District.
Engine houses stand like chess pieces on the southern flank of Bodmin Moor, tall granite boxes with their chimneys still pointing at the sky, and around them the ground is scarred by spoil heaps, shafts and old tramway beds. This is the Caradon Mining District, around the village of Pensilva and the hill of Caradon, where copper was found in the 1830s and set off a boom that made it, for a few decades, one of the richest copper districts in Britain. It is one of the ten areas of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site, listed in 2006.
Read the complete Caradon Mining District write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Caradon Mining District, about halfway. Next is back through Charlestown.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Charlestown write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Charlestown sits at 233 km, about halfway. Next is back through St Just Mining District.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete St Just Mining District write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through St Just Mining District comes up about 284 km into the recorded legs. Next is Camborne and Redruth Mining District.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Camborne and Redruth Mining District write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Camborne and Redruth Mining District closes the day.
Camborne and Redruth Mining District → St Just Mining District is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
St Just Mining District → Charlestown is 84 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Charlestown → Caradon Mining District is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Caradon Mining District → back through Charlestown is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Charlestown → back through St Just Mining District is 84 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through St Just Mining District → Camborne and Redruth Mining District is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.