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.
329 km from Seascale to Seascale, about 5 h 29 of riding. On the way it passes The English Lake District, Burrow Walls Roman fort, Palisade ditches and Hadrian's Wall between Grinsdale and the f. 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.
Ravenglass is the only coastal village in the Lake District National Park, a small huddle of whitewashed houses along a single street facing a tidal estuary where three rivers, the Esk, the Irt and the Mite, meet the Irish Sea. At low tide the estuary becomes a vast expanse of mud, sand and channels, with boats lying aslant on the shingle, and at high tide the water laps almost at the cottages' doorsteps. The Romans saw the same harbour and built a fort here, Glannoventa, as a supply base on the Cumbrian coast, linked to the line of coastal forts and towers that extended from Hadrian's Wall down the coast.
Read the complete Ravenglass Roman fort write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ravenglass Roman fort is where the day begins. 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.
The English Lake District comes up about 35 km into the recorded legs. Next is Burrow Walls Roman fort.
On the northern edge of Workington, near the mouth of the river Derwent, a fragment of stone wall stands alone in a field, a jagged piece of masonry rising above the grass. It is part of Burrow Walls, a Roman fort that guarded the Cumbrian coast, one of the chain of defences that extended from the western end of Hadrian's Wall down the shore to watch for raiders crossing from Scotland and Ireland. Much of the fort's stone was reused in a medieval building on the site, and what survives today is modest, but it is part of the Hadrian's Wall World Heritage site and has a lonely charm, with views over the sea and the river.
Read the complete Burrow Walls Roman fort write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 101 km into the recorded legs you reach Burrow Walls Roman fort. Next is Palisade ditches.
Hadrian's Wall did not simply stop at the edge of the Solway. Beyond its western end at Bowness, the Romans continued the frontier down the Cumbrian coast with a chain of milefortlets and towers, and in places with ditches and palisades, to watch over the shoreline and guard against raids across the firth from what is now south west Scotland. The palisade ditches near Silloth are part of that coastal system, faint traces in the flat land behind the dunes, and they are a reminder that the Roman frontier was a complex network that stretched far beyond the famous stone wall.
Read the complete Palisade ditches write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Palisade ditches, about halfway. Next is Hadrian's Wall between Grinsdale and the f.
West of Carlisle the Eden slows and starts to meander, swinging in wide loops through flat meadows on its way to the Solway, and here at Grinsdale Hadrian's Wall ran along the high ground above the river. It is a gentle, almost secret stretch of countryside, only a few miles from the city but feeling much further. The tiny hamlet of Grinsdale has a church dedicated to St Kentigern, an early saint associated with this region, and a scatter of farms. The Wall has gone, robbed for building stone centuries ago, but the line it followed is clear in the field boundaries and the lie of the land.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall between Grinsdale and the f write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hadrian's Wall between Grinsdale and the f sits at 152 km, about halfway. Next is back through Palisade ditches.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Palisade ditches write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Palisade ditches comes up about 198 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Burrow Walls Roman fort.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Burrow Walls Roman fort write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 227 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Burrow Walls Roman fort. 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, late in the day. Next is Ravenglass Roman fort.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ravenglass Roman fort write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 329 km.
Ravenglass Roman fort → The English Lake District is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The English Lake District → Burrow Walls Roman fort is 66 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Burrow Walls Roman fort → Palisade ditches is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Palisade ditches → Hadrian's Wall between Grinsdale and the f is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hadrian's Wall between Grinsdale and the f → back through Palisade ditches is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Palisade ditches → back through Burrow Walls Roman fort is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Burrow Walls Roman fort → back through The English Lake District is 65 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The English Lake District → Ravenglass Roman fort is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.