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 226 km round trip from Haltwhistle - roughly 3 h 37 in the saddle. On the way it passes Hadrian's Wall vallum between the watercou, Parton Roman fort and back through Hadrian's Wall vallum between the watercou. The line favours views over speed.
Sunny Rigg is a name that sounds like a farm, and that is more or less what it is, a stretch of rough pasture on the high ground just north of Haltwhistle, in Northumberland, where archaeologists have found the faint outline of a Roman temporary camp. These camps were built by marching armies at the end of each day's journey, with a ditch and a rampart thrown up around the tents to protect them overnight, and they were abandoned the next morning. Most survive only as shallow earthworks or crop marks seen from the air, which is why the places are so evocative: they record a single night of an army's life on the march, two thousand years ago.
Read the complete Sunny Rigg 3 Roman temporary camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sunny Rigg 3 Roman temporary camp is where the day begins. Next is Hadrian's Wall vallum between the watercou.
The vallum is the strangest part of Hadrian's Wall, and a good place to see it is on the flat ground near Bowness-on-Solway. It is a broad, deep ditch with a flat bottom, flanked by two mounds of earth set back from the edge, and it ran along the south side of the wall for its whole length. Nobody is certain what it was for, but the best theory is that it marked the rear boundary of a military zone, a line that civilians could cross only at controlled points, which fits with the idea of the wall as a border of customs and security as well as defence.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall vallum between the watercou write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hadrian's Wall vallum between the watercou 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 113 km into the recorded legs you reach Parton Roman fort. Next is back through Hadrian's Wall vallum between the watercou.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall vallum between the watercou write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Hadrian's Wall vallum between the watercou, late in the day. Next is Sunny Rigg 3 Roman temporary camp.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sunny Rigg 3 Roman temporary camp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Sunny Rigg 3 Roman temporary camp. That is the ride.
Sunny Rigg 3 Roman temporary camp → Hadrian's Wall vallum between the watercou is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hadrian's Wall vallum between the watercou → Parton Roman fort is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Parton Roman fort → back through Hadrian's Wall vallum between the watercou is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Hadrian's Wall vallum between the watercou → Sunny Rigg 3 Roman temporary camp is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.