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.
An 81 km round trip from Saint Agnes - roughly 1 h 44 in the saddle. On the way it passes Kennall Vale, Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts and back through Kennall Vale. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
St Agnes is a village of fewer than three thousand people on the north coast of Cornwall, and its coastline is one of the most photographed in the county. The reason is Wheal Coates, a pair of engine houses perched on a cliff above the sea at Chapel Porth, the sort of view that appears on tea towels. The engine houses once pumped water from tin and copper mines that ran under the cliff, and miners worked in tunnels that went out beneath the waves. Today they stand roofless, with ferns in the windows, against a sky that seems to change every few minutes.
Read the complete St Agnes Mining District write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
St Agnes Mining District is where the day begins. Next is Kennall Vale.
Kennall Vale is a steep, wooded ravine in the middle of Cornwall's mining country, and for a hundred years its stream was used to make gunpowder. The mills, built in the early nineteenth century, produced the powder that miners used to blast tunnels and shafts in the tin and copper mines, and the valley was chosen because it had water, privacy and trees to absorb explosions. The gunpowder works closed in the early twentieth century, and the buildings fell into ruin. Now the old mill walls stand in a thick green wood of oak, beech and ash, with moss on every stone and a leat, the stone-lined channel that brought the water, still threading through. It is one of the most atmospheric places in west Cornwall, and a nature reserve.
Read the complete Kennall Vale write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kennall Vale comes up about 18 km into the recorded legs. Next is Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts.
Tregonning Hill is a low, rounded granite dome above Germoe, and on its slopes in the middle of the eighteenth century a Plymouth chemist named William Cookworthy found white clay of a quality that Europe had never produced. He recognised it as kaolin, the secret of Chinese porcelain, and the find began an industry that eventually shifted to the larger deposits around St Austell. The ground around Tregonning and Gwinear is a landscape of old tin and copper workings, engine houses, abandoned stacks and small fields enclosed by stone hedges. The whole Cornish mining landscape was listed by UNESCO in 2006 and these districts are part of it.
Read the complete Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 39 km into the recorded legs you reach Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts. Next is back through Kennall Vale.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Kennall Vale write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Kennall Vale, late in the day. Next is St Agnes Mining District.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete St Agnes Mining District write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at St Agnes Mining District. That is the ride.
St Agnes Mining District → Kennall Vale is 18 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kennall Vale → Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts → back through Kennall Vale is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Kennall Vale → St Agnes Mining District is 18 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.