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.
358 km from Carlisle to Carlisle, about 5 h 55 of riding. On the way it passes Herd Hill North, Sea Brows, The English Lake District and Ravenglass Roman fort bath-house. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did. Water arrives beside the road and stays for 34 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
Check the pass is open before you commit to it.
Just east of Carlisle, near the village of Scotby, the Wall leaves almost no mark on the land. Here, at the western end of the Roman frontier, it was built first of turf and timber before being rebuilt in stone, and much of that stone has since been carried off to build farmhouses, churches and field walls. What survives is mostly buried, a faint line in the pasture or a slight ridge followed by a hedge. The vallum, the great earthwork that ran behind the wall, sometimes shows as a shallow trough in the fields. Yet this quiet stretch is part of the same World Heritage site as the dramatic crags further east, and walking the Hadrian's Wall Path through it gives a sense of continuity across the whole country.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Birky La write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Birky La is where the day begins. Next is Herd Hill North.
Bowness-on-Solway is the western end of Hadrian's Wall, a quiet village on a low headland above the estuary, and Herd Hill lies a little farther along the shore on the Cardurnock peninsula. Roman engineers built the wall to Bowness, where the fort of Maia stood, and then continued the defences south along the Cumbrian coast with milefortlets and towers. The northern watchtower on this hill was one of the chain that watched across the water to Scotland, at a place where the Solway is narrow enough to be forded at low tide.
Read the complete Herd Hill North write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Herd Hill North comes up about 35 km into the recorded legs. Next is Sea Brows.
Maryport is a small harbour town on the Cumbrian coast, built in the eighteenth century by the Senhouse family, who named it after Mary, the wife of Humphrey Senhouse. Long before that it was a Roman fort called Alauna, part of the coastal defences that continued south along the shore from the end of Hadrian's Wall. The Senhouse Roman Museum, set in a former Victorian naval battery on the cliffs, has a remarkable collection of altars found nearby, many of them dedicated by the commanders of the cohorts stationed here.
Read the complete Sea Brows write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 81 km into the recorded legs you reach Sea Brows. Next is The English Lake District.
Wordsworth wandered lonely as a cloud round here, and anybody who has ridden the Lake District on a wet bank holiday will understand the appeal of being lonely. The English Lake District, listed by UNESCO in 2017 as a cultural landscape, is a compact knot of mountains, lakes and valleys in Cumbria, shaped by glaciers and then by centuries of sheep farming, slate quarrying and, from the late eighteenth century, by poets, painters and tourists who came looking for the sublime.
Read the complete The English Lake District write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The English Lake District, 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 154 km, about halfway. Next is back through The English Lake District.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The English Lake District write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The English Lake District comes up about 217 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Sea Brows.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sea Brows write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 279 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Sea Brows. Next is back through Herd Hill North.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Herd Hill North write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Herd Hill North, late in the day. Next is Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Birky La.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Birky La write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 358 km.
Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Birky La → Herd Hill North is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Herd Hill North → Sea Brows is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sea Brows → The English Lake District is 65 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The English Lake District → Ravenglass Roman fort bath-house is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ravenglass Roman fort bath-house → back through The English Lake District is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The English Lake District → back through Sea Brows is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sea Brows → back through Herd Hill North is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Herd Hill North → Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Birky La is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.