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 339 km round trip from Haltwhistle - roughly 4 h 32 in the saddle. It goes by way of Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 9, Campfield and back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 9. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
The Romans were obsessed with water, and even on this bleak ridge they went to extraordinary trouble to bring it to their fort. The fort of Great Chesters, called Aesica in Roman times, stood on a crag high above the Haltwhistle Burn, with no spring close enough to supply a garrison of several hundred men and their animals. So the engineers built an aqueduct, an open channel that ran for about eight kilometres, following the contours of the land from a stream to the west, and delivered a steady flow into the fort. It was no great arched structure with spans of stone, but a simple ditch, and its beauty lies in the precision of the gradient. You can still trace the channel as a shallow line in the grass.
Read the complete Roman aqueduct to Great Chesters from the write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Roman aqueduct to Great Chesters from the is where the day begins. Next is Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 9.
Nine Roman miles west of the wall's starting point at Wallsend, the frontier is already climbing out of the Tyne valley, and here on the edge of Newburn and Heddon-on-the-Wall you can still find it in the fields. Emperor Hadrian ordered the wall in AD 122, a stone barrier across the narrowest part of northern Britain from the Tyne to the Solway, and behind it the army dug the Vallum, a broad ditch flanked by earth mounds that marked the military zone from the civilian south. On this stretch the Vallum is often easier to read than the wall itself, a long shallow trough running through the grass, especially when the evening light comes in low and picks out every bump.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 9 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 9 comes up about 54 km into the recorded legs. Next is Campfield.
Out on the Solway coast west of Carlisle, the land flattens into salt marsh, peat bog and wide tidal sands, and the sky takes over. Campfield Marsh, near Bowness-on-Solway, is a nature reserve run by the RSPB, a mix of salt marsh, wet grassland and raised bog, and in winter it fills with tens of thousands of geese, barnacle and pink-footed, arriving from the Arctic, along with waders that feed on the mud at low tide. Across the firth, the town of Annan and the Scottish hills are visible on a clear day.
Read the complete Campfield write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 169 km into the recorded legs you reach Campfield. Next is back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 9.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 9 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 9, late in the day. Next is Roman aqueduct to Great Chesters from the.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Roman aqueduct to Great Chesters from the write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Roman aqueduct to Great Chesters from the. That is the ride.
Roman aqueduct to Great Chesters from the → Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 9 is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 9 → Campfield is 115 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Campfield → back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 9 is 116 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 9 → Roman aqueduct to Great Chesters from the is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.