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.
146 km from Carlisle to Carlisle, about 2 h 41 of riding. The stops in between: The vallum between the field boundary sout, The vallum between Cockmount Hill and Wall, Red House Roman camp and back through The vallum between Cockmount Hill and Wall. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
The Solway Firth is the border's wet edge, a wide estuary with some of the biggest tides in Britain, and the Romans built the western end of Hadrian's Wall right on its southern shore. Here, a few kilometres west of Carlisle, a fort and a watchtower stood in a low, open country of marsh and meadow, watching the crossing points across the water. The route passes Biglands House and the Stangate at Crosby Lodge, local names that mark an old road, and the landscape has the long, flat, windswept character that makes this corner of Cumbria feel remote even close to a city.
Read the complete Roman fort and watch tower write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Roman fort and watch tower is where the day begins. Next is The vallum between the field boundary sout.
Not every stretch of Hadrian's Wall is the dramatic crag-top masonry of the postcards, and this is one of the quieter parts: a section of the vallum, the great ditch-and-mound earthwork the Romans dug behind the wall, running across farmland near Brampton in Cumbria. The stone wall here was largely robbed out long ago for farms and churches, so what survives is often a long, soft hollow in the grass, a line you only notice once someone points it out, and then can't stop seeing.
Read the complete The vallum between the field boundary sout write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The vallum between the field boundary sout comes up about 25 km into the recorded legs. Next is The vallum between Cockmount Hill and Wall.
The vallum is the strangest part of Hadrian's Wall, and the one that nobody fully understands. It is a great flat-bottomed ditch, with a mound on each side, running along the south of the Wall for its whole length, and it was dug soon after the Wall was begun. The usual explanation is that it marked the back edge of the military zone, a boundary that civilians were not meant to cross except at controlled crossings, but nobody knows quite what it was for. Between Cockmount Hill and the village of Walltown, the vallum is clear and well preserved, a green trench in the field that you can follow with the eye for a long way.
Read the complete The vallum between Cockmount Hill and Wall write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 51 km into the recorded legs you reach The vallum between Cockmount Hill and Wall. Next is Red House Roman camp.
A few kilometres west of Hexham the South and North Tyne have long since joined, and the valley widens into a level green floor of fields, hedges and small woods, with the Wall's ridge just visible to the north. The Red House Roman camp lies in this farmland, about five kilometres from Haydon Bridge, Acomb and Hexham, on the Roman road known as the Stanegate, which ran across the neck of Britain from Carlisle to Corbridge.
Read the complete Red House Roman camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Red House Roman camp, about halfway. Next is back through The vallum between Cockmount Hill and Wall.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The vallum between Cockmount Hill and Wall write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The vallum between Cockmount Hill and Wall sits at 101 km, about halfway. Next is back through The vallum between the field boundary sout.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The vallum between the field boundary sout write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The vallum between the field boundary sout comes up about 121 km into the recorded legs. Next is Roman fort and watch tower.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Roman fort and watch tower write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Roman fort and watch tower closes the day.
Roman fort and watch tower → The vallum between the field boundary sout is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The vallum between the field boundary sout → The vallum between Cockmount Hill and Wall is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The vallum between Cockmount Hill and Wall → Red House Roman camp is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Red House Roman camp → back through The vallum between Cockmount Hill and Wall is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The vallum between Cockmount Hill and Wall → back through The vallum between the field boundary sout is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The vallum between the field boundary sout → Roman fort and watch tower is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.