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 168 km round trip from Silloth - roughly 2 h 56 in the saddle. On the way it passes Knockcross Roman temporary camp at Grey Ha, Beaumont motte castle and section of Hadri, Hadrian's Wall between the road to Laversd and Hadrian's Wall between the field boundary.
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 17 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
Skinburness is a scatter of houses at the tip of a shingle spit on the Solway coast of Cumbria, just north of Silloth, looking across the wide, shimmering estuary to the hills of Scotland. When the tide goes out, the Solway empties into vast expanses of sand and mud, with channels winding through them, and the light changes constantly as clouds race overhead. On clear evenings, the sunsets over the Scottish hills, with the dark bulk of Criffel opposite, are spectacular.
Read the complete Skinburness write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Skinburness is where the day begins. Next is Knockcross Roman temporary camp at Grey Ha.
The Solway Firth is shallow and wide on its Scottish side, and between Annan and Gretna the land is flat and green, with sheep and cattle, field boundaries lined with hawthorn, and long views across the water to the Lake District hills.
Read the complete Knockcross Roman temporary camp at Grey Ha write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Knockcross Roman temporary camp at Grey Ha comes up about 26 km into the recorded legs. Next is Beaumont motte castle and section of Hadri.
Beaumont is one of those small places where history is stacked in layers, like books on a shelf. The little church of St Mary stands on a grassy mound that was once a Norman motte, a castle earthwork, and that mound in turn sits right on the line of Hadrian's Wall as it heads west from Carlisle towards the Solway. The builders of the motte used the Roman wall as a convenient quarry and foundation, and the church builders after them did the same. You will find no tall Roman masonry here, only the line itself, traced in field boundaries and the slight rise of the ground, and an awareness that you are standing on the edge of an empire.
Read the complete Beaumont motte castle and section of Hadri write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 46 km into the recorded legs you reach Beaumont motte castle and section of Hadri. Next is Hadrian's Wall between the road to Laversd.
East of Carlisle the Eden valley opens into a wide, quiet plain of dairy farms, hedges and red sandstone villages, and Hadrian's Wall crosses it with very little to show. Here the Wall was not built of stone at first. West of the river Irthing the Romans made it out of turf, a sloping rampart of cut sods with timber milecastles, and only later rebuilt it in stone. What survives in the fields around Laversdale is mostly a line of banks and ditches, visible as a ripple in the grass and in the pattern of the hedges, and the road that you follow probably owes its direction to the old frontier. It is a fine place to understand that the Wall was a system, not just a fence: a ditch, a barrier, a patrol road and a back ditch called the Vallum.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall between the road to Laversd write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hadrian's Wall between the road to Laversd, about halfway. Next is Hadrian's Wall between the field boundary.
Just outside Carlisle, among hedges and grazing fields, a short protected length of ground marks where Hadrian's Wall once ran between two farm boundaries. That is all the official name means, and the honest truth is that there is very little to see: a gentle bank, perhaps a slight ditch, the alignment of a hedge that follows the Roman line because nobody ever bothered to move it. What makes it worth a pause is the bigger picture. The wall here was heading for the crossing of the River Eden, where it met the fort of Stanwix on the north bank, the biggest fort on the entire frontier, home to an elite cavalry regiment a thousand strong.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall between the field boundary write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hadrian's Wall between the field boundary sits at 66 km, about halfway. Next is back through Hadrian's Wall between the road to Laversd.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall between the road to Laversd write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Hadrian's Wall between the road to Laversd comes up about 104 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Beaumont motte castle and section of Hadri.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beaumont motte castle and section of Hadri write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 123 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Beaumont motte castle and section of Hadri. Next is back through Knockcross Roman temporary camp at Grey Ha.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Knockcross Roman temporary camp at Grey Ha write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Knockcross Roman temporary camp at Grey Ha, late in the day. Next is Skinburness.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Skinburness write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 168 km.
Skinburness → Knockcross Roman temporary camp at Grey Ha is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Knockcross Roman temporary camp at Grey Ha → Beaumont motte castle and section of Hadri is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beaumont motte castle and section of Hadri → Hadrian's Wall between the road to Laversd is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hadrian's Wall between the road to Laversd → Hadrian's Wall between the field boundary is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hadrian's Wall between the field boundary → back through Hadrian's Wall between the road to Laversd is 18 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Hadrian's Wall between the road to Laversd → back through Beaumont motte castle and section of Hadri is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beaumont motte castle and section of Hadri → back through Knockcross Roman temporary camp at Grey Ha is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Knockcross Roman temporary camp at Grey Ha → Skinburness is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.