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.
From Haltwhistle it runs 158 km to Haltwhistle; allow about 2 h 40 of riding. On the way it passes Written Rock of Gelt: Roman quarry inscrip, Hadrian's Wall vallum between the dismantl, Skinburness and back through Hadrian's Wall vallum between the dismantl. 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 Written Rock of Gelt: Roman quarry inscrip.
Beside the river Gelt, a small stream that runs through a wooded sandstone gorge east of Carlisle, a smooth face of rock bears an inscription cut by Roman soldiers some eighteen centuries ago. This is the Written Rock of Gelt. It marks the quarry where legionaries cut stone for the western part of Hadrian's Wall, and it records their work, with names and dates, in neat Latin letters that are still readable though weathered by the rain.
Read the complete Written Rock of Gelt: Roman quarry inscrip write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Written Rock of Gelt: Roman quarry inscrip comes up about 21 km into the recorded legs. Next is Hadrian's Wall vallum between the dismantl.
West of Carlisle, Hadrian's Wall heads out across flat farmland toward the Solway Firth, and the closer you get to the estuary, the quieter it becomes. Along this stretch, the wall itself has largely gone, robbed for stone over the centuries, but the vallum, the wide ditch with its mounds that ran behind it, can still be traced in places, and the line passes the sites of Roman forts and the civilian settlements that grew up around them. At Stanwix, now a suburb on the north bank of the Eden, stood the largest fort on the whole wall, home to a cavalry regiment of a thousand men. Further west, at Burgh by Sands, another fort lies beneath the village and its fortified church, built partly with Roman stone.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall vallum between the dismantl write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 46 km into the recorded legs you reach Hadrian's Wall vallum between the dismantl. Next is Skinburness.
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, about halfway. Next is back through Hadrian's Wall vallum between the dismantl.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall vallum between the dismantl write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Hadrian's Wall vallum between the dismantl sits at 105 km, about halfway. Next is back through Written Rock of Gelt: Roman quarry inscrip.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Written Rock of Gelt: Roman quarry inscrip write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Written Rock of Gelt: Roman quarry inscrip comes up about 137 km into the recorded legs. 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.
Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp closes the day.
Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp → Written Rock of Gelt: Roman quarry inscrip is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Written Rock of Gelt: Roman quarry inscrip → Hadrian's Wall vallum between the dismantl is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hadrian's Wall vallum between the dismantl → Skinburness is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Skinburness → back through Hadrian's Wall vallum between the dismantl is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Hadrian's Wall vallum between the dismantl → back through Written Rock of Gelt: Roman quarry inscrip is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Written Rock of Gelt: Roman quarry inscrip → Sunny Rigg 1 Roman temporary camp is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.