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 292 km to Annan; allow about 4 h 39 of riding. The stops in between: Brownrigg milefortlet 22, The English Lake District, Ravenglass Roman fort bath-house and back through The English Lake District. 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.
The Solway Firth is one of Britain's great tidal estuaries, wide, shallow and quick. At low water, a vast expanse of sand and mud opens, and when the tide returns, it advances across the flats with astonishing speed. Pasture House lies on the English shore, on the Cardurnock peninsula, with the Scottish town of Annan visible across the water about six kilometres to the north. The Romans extended Hadrian's Wall defences down this coast, and Swarthy Hill milefortlet 21, on a neighbouring ride, is one of a chain of small forts that guarded against crossings.
Read the complete Pasture House write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Pasture House is where the day begins. Next is Brownrigg milefortlet 22.
The wall did not stop at the Solway. Along the Cumbrian coast, south of Bowness, the Romans built a chain of small forts, milecastles and watchtowers to guard against raiders arriving by sea from across the Irish Sea, and Brownrigg milecastle 22 is one of them. It stands on a low ridge above the shore near Maryport, with views across the Solway Firth to the hills of Scotland, a line of blue on a clear day. Little remains but a platform and some stonework, but the situation says everything.
Read the complete Brownrigg milefortlet 22 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Brownrigg milefortlet 22 comes up about 45 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 112 km into the recorded legs you reach The English Lake District. 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, 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 sits at 159 km, about halfway. Next is back through Brownrigg milefortlet 22.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Brownrigg milefortlet 22 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Brownrigg milefortlet 22 comes up about 247 km into the recorded legs. Next is Pasture House.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Pasture House write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Pasture House closes the day.
Pasture House → Brownrigg milefortlet 22 is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Brownrigg milefortlet 22 → The English Lake District is 67 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 Brownrigg milefortlet 22 is 64 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Brownrigg milefortlet 22 → Pasture House is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.