Free Motorcycle Touring Routes – Scotch Corner to Rothbury The Long Way

There is, of course, a perfectly sensible way to get from Scotch Corner to Rothbury … The A1. Wide, straight (ish) and tends to flow well once you are north of Harrogate. It is designed to get you from one place to another, efficiently.

It is also boring. From our office going north, the first 100 miles to the tea-and-fuel stop at Boroughbridge are the worst. Yet the A1 is the best way to do it. Nut up – shut up and get it done.

But after Boroughbridge, there are so many options. Country lanes, minor roads and wonderfully empty stretches of tarmac can replace the monotonous dual carriageway.

With that in mind, while sitting in the café at Boroughbridge, I came up with this route with a simple objective in mind: avoid people wherever reasonably possible.

The route is just under 100 miles long, and I can’t remember passing a petrol station … just saying.

In The Beginning

The route begins from the Scotch Corner Service near Middleton Tyas. Not the best of places, but there are loos and overpriced refreshments. From here, all of the roads are all tarmac, and some are only slightly wider than single track. Some look tight when you turn into them, but open out quickly. A couple of hairpins are thrown in for good measure, but they are the exception rather than the rule.

For the most part, this is the sort of route where you can settle into a rhythm and extract the maximum joy from riding the bike without having to pin the throttle.

And then there is the scenery and plenty of it.

The route crosses from the Yorkshire countryside into the North Pennines before continuing towards the wild, open country around the Northumberland National Park. Hills, valleys, moorland and enormous skies replace the traffic and roadside clutter of the A1.

Which brings me neatly to the final section.

Moving The Soul

From Otterburn, there are about 15 miles to the Vale Café in Rothbury. These 15 miles twist and flow through magnificent Northumberland countryside, offering you every type and style of bend. And on that road motorcycles get to do what motorcycles are supposed to do, and civilisation remains reassuringly somewhere else.

Frankly, if those final 15 miles don’t move your soul, it might be worth checking that you still have a pulse.

At the end of the route is the Vale Cafe in Rothbury, which provides the other essential ingredient of any worthwhile motorcycle ride: tea and cake.

So yes, there is a faster way from Scotch Corner to Rothbury, but if the journey is as important as the destination, take the long way round. I was glad I did.