Routes Older Than the Roads

Long before turnpike trusts began metalling their way across the north, the movement of goods depended on strings of packhorses. A single animal carried perhaps two hundredweight in panniers slung either side of a wooden saddle, and a train might number twenty beasts or more, led by a man walking at the head. Wool, salt, lead, coal, cloth, lime, cheese and butter all travelled this way between market towns such as Kendal, Skipton, Richmond, Hexham and Penrith. The routes those hooves wore into the hillsides are still with us — now bridleways, footpaths and quiet lanes — and walking them is one of the most rewarding ways to read the northern landscape.

Reading the Landscape: Causeys and Packhorse Bridges

The most obvious survivors are the causeys — paved causeways of flat gritstone flags laid across boggy ground, often two or three flags wide and worn smooth by centuries of traffic. You will meet them on the high moors, on the approaches to fords, and threading through the wetter cloughs where a cart could never have gone.

Then there are the bridges, and they are wonderfully distinctive once you know what you are looking at. A packhorse bridge is narrow — frequently less than six feet between parapets — with a single span and low walls, deliberately built so that loaded panniers would clear the stonework. Slater's Bridge in Little Langdale and Stockley Bridge above Borrowdale are fine examples, but dozens survive unnamed and unmarked on lesser routes.

• Look for low parapets, no room for a cart, and a humped profile that sheds water.
• Notice the paved approach ramps, often grooved and slippery in the wet.
• Check gates and stiles: a narrow side gate beside a wider one is a strong clue to a former pack route.

Inns, Stables and the Shape of a Village

Trade shaped settlements as much as it shaped tracks. Villages grew where a route crossed a river, met a turnpike, or reached the foot of a long climb. Look at the older inns and you will often find a wide archway or carriage entry, a long stable range at the back, and a yard built for animals rather than cars. The same handful of names recur across the north — the Pack Horse, the Drovers' Arms, the Horse and Farrier — and low doorways and massive beams usually mean the building predates the turnpike era.

From the mid-eighteenth century, turnpike roads and then railways took the trade away. Packhorse traffic dwindled within a generation, and many routes were simply abandoned to the moor. That is precisely why they survive so intact: nothing came along afterwards to widen or straighten them.

Wildlife on the Old Tracks

Because these routes follow becks, cloughs and field edges, they function as corridors. Below a packhorse bridge, watch for dippers bobbing on wet stones and grey wagtails flicking along the shallows. Herons stand in the quieter pools, and the wooded cloughs — damp, mossy and full of lichen — hold pied flycatchers, redstarts and wood warblers in spring.

Higher up, on the causeys, the birdlife changes sharply. Ring ouzels and wheatears on the gritstone edges, curlew and lapwing on the in-bye fields, skylarks overhead and red grouse further onto the heather. Adders bask on south-facing banks in early summer, so watch where you put your hands on a rest stop.

Timing matters. Dawn is best for birds and mammals, and bats hunt the tree-lined lanes at dusk. Between March and July, keep to the path and keep dogs close — ground-nesting birds and lapwing chicks are extremely vulnerable.

Walking a Packhorse Route Today

You do not need a long-distance trail to enjoy this. Most old routes are waymarked public rights of way, and a short circular walk will often take in a causey, a bridge and a former inn within a few miles.

• Little Langdale to Tilberthwaite in Cumbria — a slate-carrying route with Slater's Bridge as the centrepiece.
• Borrowdale to Sty Head — an old salt and cloth route, starting at Stockley Bridge.
• Grassington to Conistone in the Yorkshire Dales, following lead-mining tracks above Wharfedale.
• Rosedale and Westerdale on the North York Moors, where causeys cross the moor between old ironstone workings.
• The lanes around Kirkby Stephen in the Eden Valley, linking hamlets that were once staging points.

Kit-wise, waterproof boots are essential: stone flags are treacherous when wet, and the cloughs stay muddy well into summer. Carry the relevant Ordnance Survey Explorer map, since signposts on these routes can be sparse, and expect to open and close a good many gates.

Treading Lightly in a Working Landscape

These are not museum pieces. They run through sheep fields, past working farms and across managed moorland, and the people who live along them deal with visitors all year. Park considerately in villages, never block a field gate or a passing place, and take litter home.

During lambing and the shooting season, give way and keep dogs on leads. Close every gate behind you unless it is clearly tied open. Do that, and you will find the old routes still do what they always did: they connect places, quietly and without fuss, and they reward anyone willing to follow them slowly.