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 334 km round trip from Haltwhistle - roughly 5 h 10 in the saddle. On the way it passes Moss Side 1 and 2 Roman temporary camps, Campfield, Brownrigg North tower 21b and Ravenglass Roman fort bath-house. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
The country around Haltwhistle is where Hadrian's Wall is at its most dramatic. The Romans built it along the Whin Sill, a ridge of hard volcanic rock that rises in a long wall of crags above the farmland, and the ruins of milecastles, turrets and forts run along the top, making a line that climbs and dips like a stitched seam. Haltwhistle claims to be the centre of Britain, which no one can prove, and the town has a quiet, grey-stone high street. A Roman temporary camp, like the one at Chesters Pike, was a marching camp, where an army dug a ditch and raised a bank around a night's lodging, and left almost nothing behind. Often the only trace is a faint rectangle in the grass.
Read the complete Chesters Pike Roman temporary camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Chesters Pike Roman temporary camp is where the day begins. Next is Moss Side 1 and 2 Roman temporary camps.
Don't expect walls. The two Roman temporary camps at Moss Side are the sort of monument you mostly have to imagine: a pair of rectangles traced in the fields east of Carlisle, known from cropmarks and low earthworks rather than anything that rises above the grass. What you are looking at is a farmed slope of the lower Eden country, hedges and pasture, with Scotby and Wetheral a few kilometres off and the city of Carlisle seven kilometres to the west. The point of stopping is to stand where a Roman army once dug in for the night and to let the landscape do the explaining.
Read the complete Moss Side 1 and 2 Roman temporary camps write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Moss Side 1 and 2 Roman temporary camps comes up about 30 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 67 km into the recorded legs you reach Campfield. Next is Brownrigg North tower 21b.
Most people think Hadrian's Wall stops at the Solway, but the Roman frontier did not simply end at the water's edge. Beyond Bowness a chain of milefortlets and towers ran on down the Cumbrian coast, watching the sea and the hills of Scotland across the firth, and Brownrigg North, tower 21b in the archaeologists' numbering, was one of them. There is little to see on the ground now, often just a gentle swelling in a field, but stand here and look west and you understand why it was put there: the Solway opens out, and on a clear day the Galloway hills and the Isle of Man line the horizon.
Read the complete Brownrigg North tower 21b write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Brownrigg North tower 21b, about halfway. Next is Ravenglass Roman fort bath-house.
Walls Castle is the odd name for a Roman bath house, and the building still stands to a height of about four metres, one of the tallest Roman structures in northern England. It stood outside the fort of Glannoventa at Ravenglass, a harbour station at the meeting of three rivers, the Irt, the Mite and the Esk, and in the dry shelter of the dunes it has survived because its walls were thick and well built. You can walk around it on a short path from the village, and see niches and a doorway in the thick walls. The fort itself lies mostly under farmland and the railway.
Read the complete Ravenglass Roman fort bath-house write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ravenglass Roman fort bath-house sits at 163 km, about halfway. Next is back through Brownrigg North tower 21b.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Brownrigg North tower 21b write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Brownrigg North tower 21b comes up about 221 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through 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.
about 266 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Campfield. Next is back through Moss Side 1 and 2 Roman temporary camps.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Moss Side 1 and 2 Roman temporary camps write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Moss Side 1 and 2 Roman temporary camps, late in the day. Next is Chesters Pike Roman temporary camp.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Chesters Pike Roman temporary camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 334 km.
Chesters Pike Roman temporary camp → Moss Side 1 and 2 Roman temporary camps is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Moss Side 1 and 2 Roman temporary camps → Campfield is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Campfield → Brownrigg North tower 21b is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Brownrigg North tower 21b → Ravenglass Roman fort bath-house is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ravenglass Roman fort bath-house → back through Brownrigg North tower 21b is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Brownrigg North tower 21b → back through Campfield is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Campfield → back through Moss Side 1 and 2 Roman temporary camps is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Moss Side 1 and 2 Roman temporary camps → Chesters Pike Roman temporary camp is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.