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.
335 km from Haltwhistle to Haltwhistle, about 4 h 22 of riding. On the way it passes Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 9, Campfield and back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 9. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Cawfields is a spot where Hadrian's Wall shows its best side. The Wall runs along the top of the Whin Sill, a hard volcanic dolerite ridge, and at Cawfields it follows a steep edge above a flooded quarry, with a milecastle, number 42, sitting in a dip and clear stone steps in its entrance. The quarry was cut into the crag in the nineteenth century, and the lake it left is a popular picnic spot. The temporary camp of the label lies nearby, a faint earthwork from the days of marching armies. It is not much to look at, so use it as an excuse to walk the Wall instead.
Read the complete Cawfields Roman temporary camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cawfields Roman temporary camp is where the day begins. Next is Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 9.
Nine Roman miles west of the wall's starting point at Wallsend, the frontier is already climbing out of the Tyne valley, and here on the edge of Newburn and Heddon-on-the-Wall you can still find it in the fields. Emperor Hadrian ordered the wall in AD 122, a stone barrier across the narrowest part of northern Britain from the Tyne to the Solway, and behind it the army dug the Vallum, a broad ditch flanked by earth mounds that marked the military zone from the civilian south. On this stretch the Vallum is often easier to read than the wall itself, a long shallow trough running through the grass, especially when the evening light comes in low and picks out every bump.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 9 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 9 comes up about 52 km into the recorded legs. Next is Campfield.
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.
about 167 km into the recorded legs you reach Campfield. Next is back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 9.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 9 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 9, late in the day. Next is Cawfields Roman temporary camp.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cawfields Roman temporary camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Cawfields Roman temporary camp. That is the ride.
Cawfields Roman temporary camp → Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 9 is 52 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 9 → Campfield is 115 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Campfield → back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 9 is 116 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 9 → Cawfields Roman temporary camp is 52 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.