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 Haydon Bridge it runs 324 km to Haydon Bridge; allow about 4 h 26 of riding. The stops in between: Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2, Hadrian's Wall vallum between West End and back through Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Roman marching camps look like nothing, and yet they tell you almost everything about how the legions worked. At the end of each day's march, the soldiers dug a ditch, threw up a rampart of turf and put up their leather tents inside, in a regular plan. The camps at Coesike West, two of them side by side, were built on the moorland north of Hadrian's Wall, and they probably date from the period of campaigns in the north, before or around the time the frontier was fixed. They are only low banks and ditches now, but from the air or in low light the outline is clear.
Read the complete Coesike West Roman temporary camps 1 and 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Coesike West Roman temporary camps 1 and 2 is where the day begins. 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 comes up about 51 km into the recorded legs. Next is Hadrian's Wall vallum between West End.
Out on the Solway plain the land flattens, the sky gets enormous, and the sea is never far off even when you cannot see it. The stretch of the vallum near West End lies between Carlisle and the village of Burgh by Sands, on the last run of Hadrian's Wall towards its western end at Bowness-on-Solway. Here the Roman frontier ran along the edge of the marshes and the estuary, where the tide sweeps in across vast sands and salt marsh. Nothing of the Wall stands above ground in this section, but the line is clear on the map, and the country around has a strange, quiet beauty.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall vallum between West End write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 162 km into the recorded legs you reach Hadrian's Wall vallum between West End. Next is back through Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
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.
back through Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2, late in the day. Next is Coesike West Roman temporary camps 1 and 2.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Coesike West Roman temporary camps 1 and 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Coesike West Roman temporary camps 1 and 2. That is the ride.
Coesike West Roman temporary camps 1 and 2 → Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2 is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2 → Hadrian's Wall vallum between West End is 111 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Hadrian's Wall vallum between West End → back through Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2 is 111 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2 → Coesike West Roman temporary camps 1 and 2 is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.