Why this ride
316 km from Annan to Annan, about 4 h 25 of riding. It goes by way of Chapel Rigg Roman temporary camp, The English Lake District and back through Chapel Rigg Roman temporary camp. It strings together lakeside roads.
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.
316 km from Annan to Annan, about 4 h 25 of riding. It goes by way of Chapel Rigg Roman temporary camp, The English Lake District and back through Chapel Rigg Roman temporary camp. It strings together lakeside roads.
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 88 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
Out on the Solway coast west of Carlisle, the land flattens into salt marsh, peat bog and wide tidal sands, and the sky takes over. Campfield Marsh, near Bowness-on-Solway, is a nature reserve run by the RSPB, a mix of salt marsh, wet grassland and raised bog, and in winter it fills with tens of thousands of geese, barnacle and pink-footed, arriving from the Arctic, along with waders that feed on the mud at low tide. Across the firth, the town of Annan and the Scottish hills are visible on a clear day.
Read the complete Campfield write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Campfield is where the day begins. Next is Chapel Rigg Roman temporary camp.
West of Haltwhistle, the land rises gently to the watershed between the Tyne and the Irthing, a broad, windy saddle of rough pasture known as the Tyne Gap, where rivers flow east to the North Sea and west to the Irish Sea. Chapel Rigg Roman temporary camp is one of several marching camps here, where Roman soldiers on the move dug a rectangular ditch and rampart for a night or a season, the earthworks now barely visible as low ridges in the grass. It is part of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage site.
Read the complete Chapel Rigg Roman temporary camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Chapel Rigg Roman temporary camp comes up about 57 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 158 km into the recorded legs you reach The English Lake District. Next is back through Chapel Rigg Roman temporary camp.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Chapel Rigg Roman temporary camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Chapel Rigg Roman temporary camp, late in the day. Next is Campfield.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Campfield write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Campfield. That is the ride.
Campfield → Chapel Rigg Roman temporary camp is 57 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Chapel Rigg Roman temporary camp → The English Lake District is 101 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
The English Lake District → back through Chapel Rigg Roman temporary camp is 99 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Chapel Rigg Roman temporary camp → Campfield is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.