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.
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Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 283 km round trip from Maryport - roughly 4 h 02 in the saddle. On the way it passes Pasture House turret 3a, Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Baron's, Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp and Hadrian's Wall & vallum between field boun. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Hadrian's Wall gets the fame, but the Romans kept watching long after it ended at Bowness. The coast of Cumberland, from the Solway to St Bees, was fitted with a line of forts, fortlets and watchtowers, each numbered in sequence, and Tower 22a is one of them. It stands on the cliff above Maryport, in a place that the golf course has swallowed, and what you will find is a modest earthwork or a marker rather than a standing tower. The Romans built Alauna, a fort at Maryport, on the high ground above the harbour, and the finds from it, a collection of seventeen carved altars buried in a pit, are displayed in the Senhouse Roman Museum in a former naval battery overlooking the sea.
Read the complete Maryport Golf Course tower 22a write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Maryport Golf Course tower 22a is where the day begins. Next is Pasture House turret 3a.
A turret on Hadrian's Wall was a small stone tower, about the size of a garden shed, built into the wall itself so that two soldiers could shelter and watch the country. Two turrets stood between each pair of milecastles, spaced about a third of a Roman mile apart, which means a signal could be passed along the wall in minutes by lamp, horn or flag. Turret 3a, near Pasture House on the Solway plain, is one of those tiny posts, and it is a good place to imagine the monotony of the job: a cold, damp night, a wide flat horizon, and the wind in the grass.
Read the complete Pasture House turret 3a write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Pasture House turret 3a comes up about 46 km into the recorded legs. Next is Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Baron's.
East of Carlisle, the Eden river bends through a broad red-sandstone valley, and the line of Hadrian's Wall once ran across it. Little of the wall is visible here, because stone was reused for houses and field walls over the centuries, but the course is known, and the Vallum, the great ditch and mounds on the south side, leaves faint marks in the fields. The sector between Baron's Close and the nearby farms runs through gentle pasture, with hedgerows, oak trees and cattle, and the memory of soldiers is carried by the land itself.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Baron's write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 82 km into the recorded legs you reach Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Baron's. Next is Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp.
Haltwhistle sits in the Tyne Gap, the low cleft where the South Tyne and the old Carlisle road squeeze between the high moors of the north Pennines and the Whin Sill ridge, and that gap is the reason the Romans cared about this ground. A temporary camp is exactly what it sounds like: a ditched and banked enclosure thrown up for a night or a few weeks by an army on the march or on building duty, then abandoned. Most were ploughed flat long ago and now show only as crop marks or faint corners in a pasture, so go in expecting a field, not a ruin. What you get is the story, and the story is good.
Read the complete Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp, about halfway. Next is Hadrian's Wall & vallum between field boun.
Hadrian's Wall runs for about seventy-three miles across the north of England, from the Solway Firth in the west to the Tyne in the east, built on the orders of the Emperor Hadrian after his visit to Britain in 122 AD.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall & vallum between field boun write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hadrian's Wall & vallum between field boun sits at 139 km, about halfway. Next is back through Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp comes up about 174 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Baron's.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Baron's write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 201 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Baron's. Next is back through Pasture House turret 3a.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Pasture House turret 3a write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Pasture House turret 3a, late in the day. Next is Maryport Golf Course tower 22a.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Maryport Golf Course tower 22a write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 283 km.
Maryport Golf Course tower 22a → Pasture House turret 3a is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Pasture House turret 3a → Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Baron's is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Baron's → Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp → Hadrian's Wall & vallum between field boun is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hadrian's Wall & vallum between field boun → back through Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp → back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Baron's is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Baron's → back through Pasture House turret 3a is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Pasture House turret 3a → Maryport Golf Course tower 22a is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.