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 135 km round trip from Brampton - roughly 2 h 00 in the saddle. The stops in between: Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp, Red House Roman camp, Hadrian's Wall from Oatens Bank and back through Red House Roman camp. The line favours views over speed.
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 25 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
Camboglanna is the Roman name of the fort at Castlesteads, and the sound of it has a ring that the present quiet farmland does not. The fort sat on a ridge above the River Irthing, not far from Brampton, and it was one of the garrison posts on the western part of the wall. Little survives above ground, because the site was built over by a country house and gardens in the eighteenth century, but the line of the wall and the vallum, the great ditch behind it, can be traced across the fields nearby.
Read the complete Castlesteads Roman fort and the vallum bet write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Castlesteads Roman fort and the vallum bet is where the day begins. Next is Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp.
Haltwhistle sits in the Tyne Gap, the low cleft where the South Tyne and the old Carlisle road squeeze between the high moors of the north Pennines and the Whin Sill ridge, and that gap is the reason the Romans cared about this ground. A temporary camp is exactly what it sounds like: a ditched and banked enclosure thrown up for a night or a few weeks by an army on the march or on building duty, then abandoned. Most were ploughed flat long ago and now show only as crop marks or faint corners in a pasture, so go in expecting a field, not a ruin. What you get is the story, and the story is good.
Read the complete Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp comes up about 20 km into the recorded legs. Next is Red House Roman camp.
A few kilometres west of Hexham the South and North Tyne have long since joined, and the valley widens into a level green floor of fields, hedges and small woods, with the Wall's ridge just visible to the north. The Red House Roman camp lies in this farmland, about five kilometres from Haydon Bridge, Acomb and Hexham, on the Roman road known as the Stanegate, which ran across the neck of Britain from Carlisle to Corbridge.
Read the complete Red House Roman camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 41 km into the recorded legs you reach Red House Roman camp. Next is Hadrian's Wall from Oatens Bank.
The road west from Heddon-on-the-Wall runs straight as a ruler, and there is a reason for that. The B6318, known locally as the Military Road, was built by General Wade's engineers after the Jacobite rising of 1745 so that troops could move quickly between Newcastle and Carlisle, and for long stretches they laid it right on top of Hadrian's Wall, using the Roman stones as foundation. At Oatens Bank, just beyond Heddon, you ride with the Wall beneath your tyres and the ditch and vallum still visible in the fields beside you, two thousand years of frontier engineering compressed into a few metres.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall from Oatens Bank write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hadrian's Wall from Oatens Bank, about halfway. Next is back through Red House Roman camp.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Red House Roman camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Red House Roman camp sits at 101 km, about halfway. Next is back through Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp comes up about 115 km into the recorded legs. Next is Castlesteads Roman fort and the vallum bet.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Castlesteads Roman fort and the vallum bet write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Castlesteads Roman fort and the vallum bet closes the day.
Castlesteads Roman fort and the vallum bet → Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp → Red House Roman camp is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Red House Roman camp → Hadrian's Wall from Oatens Bank is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hadrian's Wall from Oatens Bank → back through Red House Roman camp is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Red House Roman camp → back through Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp → Castlesteads Roman fort and the vallum bet is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.