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 Annan it runs 344 km to Annan; allow about 5 h 22 of riding. It goes by way of The vallum between Cockmount Hill and Wall, The English Lake District and back through The vallum between Cockmount Hill and Wall. It strings together lakeside roads.
The western end of Hadrian's Wall is not where most people expect. Instead of a grand terminus, the frontier fades out among the tidal mud and salt marsh of the Solway Firth, near the village of Bowness-on-Solway, where the last fort once stood. Between Port Carlisle and Bowness the wall is almost entirely gone, its stones carried away for later buildings, and what survives is a line across the fields, a slight rise and a path along the shore. In this section the wall was originally built of turf rather than stone, a cheaper material for the flatter, softer ground.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall between Port Carlisle and B write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hadrian's Wall between Port Carlisle and B is where the day begins. Next is The vallum between Cockmount Hill and Wall.
The vallum is the strangest part of Hadrian's Wall, and the one that nobody fully understands. It is a great flat-bottomed ditch, with a mound on each side, running along the south of the Wall for its whole length, and it was dug soon after the Wall was begun. The usual explanation is that it marked the back edge of the military zone, a boundary that civilians were not meant to cross except at controlled crossings, but nobody knows quite what it was for. Between Cockmount Hill and the village of Walltown, the vallum is clear and well preserved, a green trench in the field that you can follow with the eye for a long way.
Read the complete The vallum between Cockmount Hill and Wall write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The vallum between Cockmount Hill and Wall comes up about 64 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 172 km into the recorded legs you reach The English Lake District. Next is back through The vallum between Cockmount Hill and Wall.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The vallum between Cockmount Hill and Wall write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The vallum between Cockmount Hill and Wall, late in the day. Next is Hadrian's Wall between Port Carlisle and B.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall between Port Carlisle and B write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Hadrian's Wall between Port Carlisle and B. That is the ride.
Hadrian's Wall between Port Carlisle and B → The vallum between Cockmount Hill and Wall is 64 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The vallum between Cockmount Hill and Wall → The English Lake District is 108 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
The English Lake District → back through The vallum between Cockmount Hill and Wall is 108 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through The vallum between Cockmount Hill and Wall → Hadrian's Wall between Port Carlisle and B is 64 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.