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 Gateshead it runs 177 km to Gateshead; allow about 2 h 32 of riding. The stops in between: Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Sunnybra, Bean Burn 1 Roman temporary camp, Brampton Old Church Roman fort and the med and back through Bean Burn 1 Roman temporary camp. The line favours views over speed.
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 is where the day begins. Next is Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Sunnybra.
Just east of the point where the A68 crosses the line of Hadrian's Wall, at Portgate, the Romans had a gateway through the frontier for Dere Street, the great road running north from York into Scotland. Today the A68 follows much the same course, and the wall and its vallum run east and west across the fields here, sometimes visible as a bank or a ditch, sometimes buried under the Military Road. A little to the east, the fort of Halton Chesters, known to the Romans as Onnum, lies under the fields, and like the rest of the frontier, this stretch is part of the UNESCO Frontiers of the Roman Empire.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Sunnybra write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Sunnybra comes up about 31 km into the recorded legs. Next is Bean Burn 1 Roman temporary camp.
There is not much to see at Bean Burn, and that is rather the point. East of Haltwhistle, in the South Tyne valley a little below the line of Hadrian's Wall, archaeologists have traced the outline of a Roman temporary camp: a rectangle of low banks and ditches, often barely visible except from the air or in raking evening light. Camps like this were thrown up by soldiers on the march or during construction of the Wall, a night's or a season's shelter surrounded by a turf rampart and a ditch, with leather tents pitched inside in neat rows. Northumberland has an unusual concentration of them, and they tell a quieter story than the forts: of thousands of men moving across this landscape, digging in, moving on.
Read the complete Bean Burn 1 Roman temporary camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 62 km into the recorded legs you reach Bean Burn 1 Roman temporary camp. Next is Brampton Old Church Roman fort and the med.
Brampton is the sort of small Cumbrian market town that makes a good place to stop for lunch without any plan to do so. A few miles east of Carlisle, in the green valley of the River Irthing, it has an octagonal Moot Hall in the market place, built in the early nineteenth century, and a main street of sandstone houses and tea rooms. Market day brings stalls to the square, and the town has the unhurried feel of a place that knows where it is. The old church that gives this stop its name stands outside the town, on a rise by the river, with the grass mounds of a Roman fort beside it.
Read the complete Brampton Old Church Roman fort and the med write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Brampton Old Church Roman fort and the med, about halfway. Next is back through Bean Burn 1 Roman temporary camp.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Bean Burn 1 Roman temporary camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Bean Burn 1 Roman temporary camp sits at 139 km, about halfway. Next is back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Sunnybra.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Sunnybra write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Sunnybra comes up about 147 km into the recorded legs. Next is 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.
Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2 closes the day.
Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2 → Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Sunnybra is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Sunnybra → Bean Burn 1 Roman temporary camp is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bean Burn 1 Roman temporary camp → Brampton Old Church Roman fort and the med is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Brampton Old Church Roman fort and the med → back through Bean Burn 1 Roman temporary camp is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Bean Burn 1 Roman temporary camp → back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Sunnybra is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Sunnybra → Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2 is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.