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.
67 km from Haydon Bridge to Haydon Bridge, about 55 min of riding. It goes by way of Sunny Rigg 2 Roman temporary camp, Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Banks Gr and back through Sunny Rigg 2 Roman temporary camp. The line favours views over speed.
Hadrian's Wall in its central section does what a good border should: it picks the best ridge in the country and sits on top of it. The wall was begun in AD 122, under the emperor Hadrian, and it runs for about eighty Roman miles, roughly 117 kilometres, from the Tyne to the Solway. In the middle stretch, between Haydon Bridge and Haltwhistle, it follows a line of crags called the Whin Sill, a hard, dark volcanic rock that breaks the Northumbrian moors into a series of cliffs, so that the wall looks as if it grew out of the stone.
Read the complete Roman camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Roman camp is where the day begins. Next is Sunny Rigg 2 Roman temporary camp.
Haltwhistle likes to call itself the centre of Britain, and whether or not you believe the measurements, it sits at the very heart of Hadrian's Wall country. Just outside the town, on a gentle slope called Sunny Rigg, the outlines of two Roman temporary camps have been traced, rectangular enclosures with rounded corners where units on the march, or building the wall, pitched their leather tents behind a bank and a ditch for a night or a season. They are part of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site, though on the ground you will see only faint lines in the grass, best appreciated from the air or in low evening light.
Read the complete Sunny Rigg 2 Roman temporary camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sunny Rigg 2 Roman temporary camp comes up about 15 km into the recorded legs. Next is Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Banks Gr.
North-east of Brampton, the Wall climbs out of the Irthing valley and runs along a ridge past the hamlet of Banks, and here you can see something many visitors miss: not only the Wall itself, but the vallum, the great earthwork ditch with banks on either side that the Romans dug just south of it. The vallum marked a military zone, a controlled strip where civilians could not wander freely, and seeing its long straight line beside the stone curtain makes the frontier feel less like a wall and more like a whole system of control.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Banks Gr write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 34 km into the recorded legs you reach Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Banks Gr. Next is back through Sunny Rigg 2 Roman temporary camp.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sunny Rigg 2 Roman temporary camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Sunny Rigg 2 Roman temporary camp, late in the day. Next is Roman camp.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Roman camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Roman camp. That is the ride.
Roman camp → Sunny Rigg 2 Roman temporary camp is 15 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sunny Rigg 2 Roman temporary camp → Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Banks Gr is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hadrian's Wall and vallum between Banks Gr → back through Sunny Rigg 2 Roman temporary camp is 18 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sunny Rigg 2 Roman temporary camp → Roman camp is 15 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.