Читать книгу Walking in the Yorkshire Dales: North and East. Howgills, Mallerstang, Swaledale, Wensleydale, Coverdale and Nidderdale онлайн

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But, while railways and main roads are few, innumerable paths and tracks criss-cross the whole area. Some may have their origins in prehistoric times, others, like the Cam High Road above Bainbridge, follow the lines of Roman roads, while many more were trodden by the monks and lay workers of the great medieval abbeys and priories as they administered their far-flung estates.

Dating from pre-industrial Britain, pack-horse trails and cattle drove roads were once the main arteries of trade, while other tracks connected small settlements to market towns. Some of the tracks that appear on today’s maps now appear rather pointless, ending abruptly on the slope of a bare hillside or winding onto the moors to finish in a barren wilderness. But follow them on the ground and you will come across abandoned turbaries or disused mine and quarry workings. Other tracks, called coffin roads, served a more sombre purpose. Even if a chapel existed in an upper valley, burial rights were generally reserved to the parish churches down below, and so the dead had to be brought down for interment, as was the case in Swaledale. Indeed, there are hardly any routes you can follow in the Dales that do not have some story to tell.