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 148 km round trip from Hexham - roughly 2 h 12 in the saddle. On the way it passes Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the Marc, Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2, Durham Castle and Cathedral and back through Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 31 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
Down by the North Tyne, where the river runs fast over stones under a canopy of trees, a Roman cavalry regiment once kept its horses and its very comfortable bath house. Chesters, the fort the Romans called Cilurnum, sat astride Hadrian's Wall near the village of Walwick, guarding the bridge that carried the wall across the river. It is one of the best preserved forts along the wall, with the headquarters building, the commander's house and the bath house still standing to knee or shoulder height, and the remains of the bridge abutment visible on the far bank.
Read the complete The Roman fort write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Roman fort is where the day begins. Next is Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the Marc.
Most people meet Hadrian's Wall in the wild middle section around Housesteads, where it rides the crags of the Whin Sill. Out here at the eastern end, a few miles from Newcastle, it is a quieter, more domestic affair, and that is part of its charm. Heddon on the Wall, four kilometres away, keeps one of the longest surviving stretches of the wall's full broad foundation on this side of the country, a solid run of masonry beside the road, and the ground around it preserves the vallum, the great flat-bottomed ditch with banks on either side that the Romans dug just south of the wall to mark the military zone. Begun under the emperor Hadrian in AD 122, the whole frontier ran from the Tyne to the Solway, and it is part of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the Marc write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the Marc comes up about 20 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 41 km into the recorded legs you reach Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2. Next is Durham Castle and Cathedral.
The river Wear loops around a rocky peninsula in a tight horseshoe, and on top of it, rising above the trees, stand Durham Cathedral and Durham Castle, one of the most impressive views in Britain. The Normans built both in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, soon after the Conquest, as a statement of power in the turbulent north. The cathedral is a masterpiece of Romanesque architecture, with massive columns carved with zigzags and spirals, and its stone rib vaults are among the earliest of their kind in Europe, pointing the way to Gothic architecture. Together, castle and cathedral were listed by UNESCO in 1986.
Read the complete Durham Castle and Cathedral write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Durham Castle and Cathedral, about halfway. Next is back through Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
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.
back through Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2 sits at 107 km, about halfway. Next is back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the Marc.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the Marc write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the Marc comes up about 127 km into the recorded legs. Next is The Roman fort.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Roman fort write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Roman fort closes the day.
The Roman fort → Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the Marc is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the Marc → Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2 is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2 → Durham Castle and Cathedral is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Durham Castle and Cathedral → back through Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2 is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Hadrian's Wall in wall mile 2 → back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the Marc is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Hadrian's Wall and vallum between the Marc → The Roman fort is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.