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.
236 km from Haltwhistle to Haltwhistle, about 3 h 38 of riding. The stops in between: Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the acce, Parton Roman fort and back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the acce. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Haltwhistle sits in the Tyne Gap, the low cleft where the South Tyne and the old Carlisle road squeeze between the high moors of the north Pennines and the Whin Sill ridge, and that gap is the reason the Romans cared about this ground. A temporary camp is exactly what it sounds like: a ditched and banked enclosure thrown up for a night or a few weeks by an army on the march or on building duty, then abandoned. Most were ploughed flat long ago and now show only as crop marks or faint corners in a pasture, so go in expecting a field, not a ruin. What you get is the story, and the story is good.
Read the complete Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp is where the day begins. Next is Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the acce.
Across the water from here lies Eastriggs, a quiet Scottish village with a loud past. During the First World War a huge munitions factory stretched for miles along the Solway coast from Gretna to Annan, and the cordite paste that women workers mixed by hand earned the nickname devil's porridge. Thousands lived in purpose-built townships, and the whole operation was kept secret. A museum in Eastriggs now tells the story. The reason the label brings us to the English shore, though, is the Roman frontier, because Hadrian's Wall did not simply stop at Bowness-on-Solway. Beyond it a chain of milefortlets and towers carried on down the Cumbrian coast, watching the sea rather than the hills.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the acce write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the acce comes up about 54 km into the recorded legs. Next is Parton Roman fort.
Hadrian's Wall stopped at Bowness-on-Solway, but the Roman frontier did not. Down the Cumbrian coast, the army built a chain of forts, milefortlets and towers to watch the sea and stop raiders slipping round the end of the Wall, and Parton, just north of Whitehaven, was one of them. The fort is known from excavations and records rather than standing remains, and the coastal defences as a whole are included in the UNESCO Frontiers of the Roman Empire. Standing on the cliffs above the sea, you can see why the Romans worried: across the water lie the Isle of Man and, on clear days, the hills of Scotland.
Read the complete Parton Roman fort write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 118 km into the recorded legs you reach Parton Roman fort. Next is back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the acce.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the acce write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the acce, late in the day. Next is Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp. That is the ride.
Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp → Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the acce is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the acce → Parton Roman fort is 64 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Parton Roman fort → back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the acce is 64 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the acce → Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.