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.
352 km from Baildon to Baildon, about 4 h 59 of riding. The stops in between: Component 2, Durham Castle and Cathedral, Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 8 f and back through Durham Castle and Cathedral. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 35 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
Titus Salt was a Bradford wool magnate who got tired of the smoke, the sickness and the squalor of the city, and in 1851 he began building a new mill and a new town beside the river Aire, a few miles north. Saltaire, his name joined to the river's, was a model community: tidy stone terraces of different sizes for different grades of worker, a hospital, a school, almshouses, a church, a park, and a huge Italianate mill with a campanile chimney. The mill opened in 1853 and was among the largest in the world. UNESCO listed the village in 2001 as an outstanding example of Victorian industrial planning.
Read the complete Saltaire write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Saltaire is where the day begins. Next is Component 2.
The monks who founded Fountains Abbey arrived in 1132, a band of Benedictines from York who were unhappy with the laxity of their house and decided to follow the strict rule of the Cistercians. They settled in a wild, wooded valley beside the River Skell, with, as the chronicle says, nothing but thorn trees and rough stones, and over four centuries they built one of the richest and largest monasteries in England. Henry VIII dissolved it in 1539, and the ruins that remain, the great church with its soaring tower, the long cellarium and the cloister, are among the most beautiful in Europe. In the eighteenth century the owner of the neighbouring estate, John Aislabie, turned the valley into a water garden, so the ruins are now part of a designed landscape of ponds, canals and temples. UNESCO listed the whole ensemble in 1986.
Read the complete Component 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Component 2 comes up about 44 km into the recorded legs. Next is Durham Castle and Cathedral.
The river Wear loops around a rocky peninsula in a tight horseshoe, and on top of it, rising above the trees, stand Durham Cathedral and Durham Castle, one of the most impressive views in Britain. The Normans built both in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, soon after the Conquest, as a statement of power in the turbulent north. The cathedral is a masterpiece of Romanesque architecture, with massive columns carved with zigzags and spirals, and its stone rib vaults are among the earliest of their kind in Europe, pointing the way to Gothic architecture. Together, castle and cathedral were listed by UNESCO in 1986.
Read the complete Durham Castle and Cathedral write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 139 km into the recorded legs you reach Durham Castle and Cathedral. Next is Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 8 f.
Here, at the western edge of Newcastle, the Roman frontier starts to escape the city. Wall mile 8 lies around Newburn and Throckley, with Blaydon across the Tyne and the suburbs thinning into fields as you head west. The masonry itself has mostly vanished under roads, houses and farmland, but the line of the Wall and the great earthwork of the Vallum to its south can still be followed in hummocks, ditches and the occasional consolidated stretch of stone, most famously a little further west at Heddon-on-the-Wall, where a long run survives at nearly its full original width.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 8 f write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 8 f, about halfway. Next is back through Durham Castle and Cathedral.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Durham Castle and Cathedral write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Durham Castle and Cathedral sits at 239 km, about halfway. Next is back through Component 2.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Component 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Component 2 comes up about 307 km into the recorded legs. Next is Saltaire.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Saltaire write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Saltaire closes the day.
Saltaire → Component 2 is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Component 2 → Durham Castle and Cathedral is 95 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Durham Castle and Cathedral → Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 8 f is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hadrian's Wall and vallum in wall mile 8 f → back through Durham Castle and Cathedral is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Durham Castle and Cathedral → back through Component 2 is 95 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Component 2 → Saltaire is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.