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 Brampton it runs 183 km to Brampton; allow about 2 h 52 of riding. On the way it passes Vindolanda, Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the B632, Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2 and back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the B632. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 34 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 Vindolanda.
Vindolanda is the place where the Romans on the northern frontier start to sound like people. The fort stood on the Stanegate road, just south of the wall, and for several centuries it was rebuilt again and again, each new fort laid on top of the last. The damp, airless soil preserved wood and leather, and in 1973 archaeologists found thin wooden writing tablets covered in ink, letters written by soldiers, officers and their families in about AD 100. They are the oldest handwritten documents found in Britain.
Read the complete Vindolanda write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Vindolanda comes up about 29 km into the recorded legs. Next is Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the B632.
East of Hexham, the Roman frontier crosses gentler country, a rolling landscape of fields, hedges and small woods north of the Tyne valley. Here the Wall itself has mostly disappeared, its stones long since recycled into farmhouses, field walls and the eighteenth-century Military Road that runs along its line. But the vallum, the broad ditch with mounds on either side that marked the southern edge of the military zone, survives in places as a clear earthwork across the fields, and walkers on the Hadrian's Wall Path follow it for miles. This section is part of the same World Heritage site as the dramatic crags further west.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the B632 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 63 km into the recorded legs you reach Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the B632. Next is Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2.
Most people picture Hadrian's Wall striding across lonely Northumberland crags. Wall mile 2 is the other end of the story: an urban stretch in the east of Newcastle upon Tyne, where the wall ran from the fort at Wallsend, Segedunum, westwards along the north bank of the Tyne towards the bridge and fort at Pons Aelius, beneath today's city centre. Very little of the wall itself is visible here; terraced houses, roads and shipyards have long since swallowed it. But you are standing on the first miles of a frontier that once ran coast to coast for about eighty Roman miles.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2, about halfway. Next is back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the B632.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the B632 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the B632 sits at 139 km, about halfway. Next is back through Vindolanda.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Vindolanda write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Vindolanda comes up about 155 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 → Vindolanda is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Vindolanda → Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the B632 is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the B632 → Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2 is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2 → back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the B632 is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the B632 → back through Vindolanda is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Vindolanda → Castlesteads Roman fort and the vallum bet is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.