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.
184 km from Brampton to Brampton, about 2 h 50 of riding. It goes by way of Vindolanda, Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the B632, Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2 and back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the B632. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Brampton is the kind of small Cumbrian market town that riders pass on the A69 without a second look, which is a pity, because the country just north and east of it is some of the richest Roman and medieval ground on the whole Wall. The site of the Roman bath house lies close to the town, near the remains of an early fort on the Stanegate, and like most bath houses it sat outside the fort walls, where its furnaces and the risk of fire could do less harm. Little or nothing stands above ground, so come for the setting rather than the stones.
Read the complete The Roman bath house to the north east of write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Roman bath house to the north east of is where the day begins. Next is Vindolanda.
Vindolanda is the place where the Romans on the northern frontier start to sound like people. The fort stood on the Stanegate road, just south of the wall, and for several centuries it was rebuilt again and again, each new fort laid on top of the last. The damp, airless soil preserved wood and leather, and in 1973 archaeologists found thin wooden writing tablets covered in ink, letters written by soldiers, officers and their families in about AD 100. They are the oldest handwritten documents found in Britain.
Read the complete Vindolanda write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Vindolanda comes up about 29 km into the recorded legs. Next is Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the B632.
East of Hexham, the Roman frontier crosses gentler country, a rolling landscape of fields, hedges and small woods north of the Tyne valley. Here the Wall itself has mostly disappeared, its stones long since recycled into farmhouses, field walls and the eighteenth-century Military Road that runs along its line. But the vallum, the broad ditch with mounds on either side that marked the southern edge of the military zone, survives in places as a clear earthwork across the fields, and walkers on the Hadrian's Wall Path follow it for miles. This section is part of the same World Heritage site as the dramatic crags further west.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the B632 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 63 km into the recorded legs you reach Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the B632. Next is Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2.
Most people picture Hadrian's Wall striding across lonely Northumberland crags. Wall mile 2 is the other end of the story: an urban stretch in the east of Newcastle upon Tyne, where the wall ran from the fort at Wallsend, Segedunum, westwards along the north bank of the Tyne towards the bridge and fort at Pons Aelius, beneath today's city centre. Very little of the wall itself is visible here; terraced houses, roads and shipyards have long since swallowed it. But you are standing on the first miles of a frontier that once ran coast to coast for about eighty Roman miles.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2, about halfway. Next is back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the B632.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the B632 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the B632 sits at 139 km, about halfway. Next is back through Vindolanda.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Vindolanda write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Vindolanda comes up about 155 km into the recorded legs. Next is The Roman bath house to the north east of.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Roman bath house to the north east of write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Roman bath house to the north east of closes the day.
The Roman bath house to the north east of → Vindolanda is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Vindolanda → Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the B632 is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the B632 → Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2 is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2 → back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the B632 is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the B632 → back through Vindolanda is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Vindolanda → The Roman bath house to the north east of is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.