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 185 km round trip from St Austell - roughly 3 h 30 in the saddle. It goes by way of Devoran and Perran, Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts, St Just Mining District and back through Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts. The line favours views over speed.
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.
Charlestown is where the day begins. Next is Devoran and Perran.
Devoran is a quiet village at the head of Restronguet Creek, a tidal arm of the Fal estuary south of Truro, and it takes a little imagination to see it as the busy industrial port it once was. In the nineteenth century, the Redruth and Chasewater Railway brought copper ore down from the mines to quays here, where ships loaded it for smelters in South Wales and returned with coal. The remains of the quays, ore hoppers and old warehouses are still visible along the shore, and the village is part of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape, listed by UNESCO in 2006.
Read the complete Devoran and Perran write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Devoran and Perran comes up about 38 km into the recorded legs. Next is Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts.
Tregonning Hill is a low, rounded granite dome above Germoe, and on its slopes in the middle of the eighteenth century a Plymouth chemist named William Cookworthy found white clay of a quality that Europe had never produced. He recognised it as kaolin, the secret of Chinese porcelain, and the find began an industry that eventually shifted to the larger deposits around St Austell. The ground around Tregonning and Gwinear is a landscape of old tin and copper workings, engine houses, abandoned stacks and small fields enclosed by stone hedges. The whole Cornish mining landscape was listed by UNESCO in 2006 and these districts are part of it.
Read the complete Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 67 km into the recorded legs you reach Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts. 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, about halfway. Next is back through Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts sits at 126 km, about halfway. Next is back through Devoran and Perran.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Devoran and Perran write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Devoran and Perran comes up about 148 km into the recorded legs. Next is 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.
Charlestown closes the day.
Charlestown → Devoran and Perran is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Devoran and Perran → Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts → St Just Mining District is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
St Just Mining District → back through Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts → back through Devoran and Perran is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Devoran and Perran → Charlestown is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.