Hadrian’s Cycleway is a 170-mile exploration into Britain’s past. As well as magnificent coastal views and breathtaking countryside you’ll see the famous wall itself, Roman forts and museums, quaint villages and attractive market towns, all set in a World Heritage Site.
https://www.sustrans.org.uk/find-other-routes/hadrians-cycleway
The Journey Begins
Set off early for Newcastle Central, weather dry 👍 made it in good time met up with Mark outside the station and bought our tickets (£33 and didn’t get checked for the whole journey). Got to platform 6 in good time managed to get on the train with no problems even though there was another couple with bikes doing the C2C 😬
The journey went by quickly and arrived on time. Carlisle was setup with a stupid one way system involving carrying bikes up steep steps and then when we got to the platform couldn’t even get our bikes on because it was too busy 🙄
Thankfully the next train guard was a decent bloke and managed to squeeze us in… faith restored in public transport.
Finally arrived at Ravenglass around 13:00 a quaint little station with a historical past took some photos by the sign just outside the station… Wallsend 139 miles away Rome only 1127 miles, I’ll save that for another day!
Quick map check and we found the official start point of the ride so headed towards Ravenglass Roman Bath House.
(The remains of the bath house of Ravenglass Roman fort, established in AD 130, are among the tallest Roman structures surviving in northern Britain – the walls stand almost four metres high. The fort at Ravenglass (whose earthworks can be seen near the bath house) guarded what was probably a useful harbour, and there is evidence that soldiers stationed here served in Hadrian’s fleet.)
Got ourselves composed for the 174 mile epic back to the North-East and we were off… let’s see how far up the coast we can get before dark.
Day One Ravenglass To Allonby
The first section was a bit off-road along the beach on narrow walkways over a bridge in the estuary and hugging the coast stopped to admire Ravenglass from across the estuary.
The afternoon stayed warm & dry as we moved up the West coast (The irony being that we’d passed all these places on the train coming down!!) I came to the conclusion that the West coast isn’t as nice as the East… some of the small towns we passed through were rough and forgotten about pebble-dashed homes and harsh landscapes. We did however pass some prominent sights along the way.
(Sellafield is a large multi-function nuclear site close to Seascale on the coast of Cumbria, England. As of 2019, activities at the site include nuclear fuel reprocessing, nuclear waste storage and nuclear decommissioning, and it is a former nuclear power generating site.)
Carried on along the coast through Whitehaven and the marker for the C2C route.
Then onwards towards Workington over Navvies Bridge.
With the weather still dry and our legs fairly fresh we pushed on to Maryport where we took a quick break/map check.
Maryport looked like a decent place compared to the others we’d passed through queues for the chippy so we didn’t hang around too long seeing as we had Allonby set as our end goal for the day.
On a mixture of road and cycle paths we moved further northwards… until the need for caffeine took over and we decided to stop at a little shop for ice-cream & coffee. While there chilling after a long day we checked google maps for somewhere nearby to camp… and as luck would have it there was a possible spot just up the road so we headed off to investigate…
Arrived at Old Kiln Farm and knocked on the door using our charm asked if it was possible to camp there for the night… no problems £10 for us both and use of the shower facilities… bonus.
Found a quiet isolated pitch on the field and got ourselves setup for the night had a quick spaghetti and meatballs followed by cherry turnover for tea… job done. By now the weather had turned cold plus it had been a long day decided to get washed up and hit the sack…
End of day one.
For details check out the ride on komoot.
Thoughts on Two Wheels 