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.
A 331 km round trip from Haltwhistle - roughly 4 h 14 in the saddle. It goes by way of Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 8 f, Biglands House and back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 8 f. The line favours views over speed.
Long before the wall existed, the Romans ran a road across the narrow neck of northern England, the Stanegate, linking the forts of Corbridge on the Tyne and Carlisle on the Eden. It was built around AD 80, in the time of the general Agricola, and it served as the frontier line for a generation before Hadrian ordered the wall to be built a little to the north. Forts and fortlets sat along it, among them Vindolanda and the small post at Haltwhistle Burn, and temporary camps like the one at Milestone House show where troops stopped on the move.
Read the complete Milestone House Roman temporary camp and s write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Milestone House Roman temporary camp and s is where the day begins. Next is Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 8 f.
Here, at the western edge of Newcastle, the Roman frontier starts to escape the city. Wall mile 8 lies around Newburn and Throckley, with Blaydon across the Tyne and the suburbs thinning into fields as you head west. The masonry itself has mostly vanished under roads, houses and farmland, but the line of the Wall and the great earthwork of the Vallum to its south can still be followed in hummocks, ditches and the occasional consolidated stretch of stone, most famously a little further west at Heddon-on-the-Wall, where a long run survives at nearly its full original width.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 8 f write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 8 f comes up about 51 km into the recorded legs. Next is Biglands House.
Out on the Cumbrian shore of the Solway Firth, at the far western end of Hadrian's frontier, Biglands is a farmhouse name attached to the site of a small Roman milefortlet, one of the posts that carried the Wall's chain of defences down the coast once the stone curtain itself had stopped at Bowness. There is very little to see above ground; the fortlet was excavated and then returned to the grass. What you come for is the setting and the sense of standing at the edge of an empire, looking across a few kilometres of mud and water at Scotland.
Read the complete Biglands House write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 165 km into the recorded legs you reach Biglands House. Next is back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 8 f.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 8 f write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 8 f, late in the day. Next is Milestone House Roman temporary camp and s.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Milestone House Roman temporary camp and s write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Milestone House Roman temporary camp and s. That is the ride.
Milestone House Roman temporary camp and s → Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 8 f is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 8 f → Biglands House is 114 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Biglands House → back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 8 f is 113 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 8 f → Milestone House Roman temporary camp and s is 53 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.