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 324 km to Haltwhistle; allow about 5 h 01 of riding. On the way it passes The Stangate at Crosby Lodge, Campfield, Brownrigg North tower 21b and Ravenglass Roman fort bath-house. 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 The Stangate at Crosby Lodge.
Before there was a Wall, there was a road. The Stanegate, a Roman route running east to west between the Tyne at Corbridge and the Eden at Carlisle, was the first frontier line in northern Britain, guarded by a string of forts decades before Hadrian ordered his great barrier built a little to the north. Near Crosby-on-Eden, a few miles east of Carlisle, the line of the old road passes through gentle farmland on the north bank of the Eden, and while there is little to see of the road itself, the landscape tells the story of how the Romans picked their way across this narrow neck of the country.
Read the complete The Stangate at Crosby Lodge write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Stangate at Crosby Lodge comes up about 27 km into the recorded legs. Next is Campfield.
Out on the Solway coast west of Carlisle, the land flattens into salt marsh, peat bog and wide tidal sands, and the sky takes over. Campfield Marsh, near Bowness-on-Solway, is a nature reserve run by the RSPB, a mix of salt marsh, wet grassland and raised bog, and in winter it fills with tens of thousands of geese, barnacle and pink-footed, arriving from the Arctic, along with waders that feed on the mud at low tide. Across the firth, the town of Annan and the Scottish hills are visible on a clear day.
Read the complete Campfield write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 63 km into the recorded legs you reach Campfield. Next is Brownrigg North tower 21b.
Most people think Hadrian's Wall stops at the Solway, but the Roman frontier did not simply end at the water's edge. Beyond Bowness a chain of milefortlets and towers ran on down the Cumbrian coast, watching the sea and the hills of Scotland across the firth, and Brownrigg North, tower 21b in the archaeologists' numbering, was one of them. There is little to see on the ground now, often just a gentle swelling in a field, but stand here and look west and you understand why it was put there: the Solway opens out, and on a clear day the Galloway hills and the Isle of Man line the horizon.
Read the complete Brownrigg North tower 21b write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Brownrigg North tower 21b, about halfway. Next is Ravenglass Roman fort bath-house.
Walls Castle is the odd name for a Roman bath house, and the building still stands to a height of about four metres, one of the tallest Roman structures in northern England. It stood outside the fort of Glannoventa at Ravenglass, a harbour station at the meeting of three rivers, the Irt, the Mite and the Esk, and in the dry shelter of the dunes it has survived because its walls were thick and well built. You can walk around it on a short path from the village, and see niches and a doorway in the thick walls. The fort itself lies mostly under farmland and the railway.
Read the complete Ravenglass Roman fort bath-house write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ravenglass Roman fort bath-house sits at 162 km, about halfway. Next is back through Brownrigg North tower 21b.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Brownrigg North tower 21b write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Brownrigg North tower 21b comes up about 217 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Campfield.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Campfield write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 262 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Campfield. Next is back through The Stangate at Crosby Lodge.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Stangate at Crosby Lodge write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The Stangate at Crosby Lodge, 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.
The route ends here after 324 km.
Sunny Rigg 3 Roman temporary camp → The Stangate at Crosby Lodge is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Stangate at Crosby Lodge → Campfield is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Campfield → Brownrigg North tower 21b is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Brownrigg North tower 21b → Ravenglass Roman fort bath-house is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ravenglass Roman fort bath-house → back through Brownrigg North tower 21b is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Brownrigg North tower 21b → back through Campfield is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Campfield → back through The Stangate at Crosby Lodge is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The Stangate at Crosby Lodge → Sunny Rigg 3 Roman temporary camp is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.