How Packhorse Routes Shaped Remote Dales Communities

The Highways Before the Highways

Long before turnpikes, railways and tarmac, the British uplands ran on the backs of ponies. A packhorse train of a dozen beasts, each carrying perhaps 60 to 100 kilograms in panniers slung either side of a wooden crook, could shift goods where no cart would ever go. Galloway ponies, sturdy and sure-footed, were the workhorses of this trade for the best part of six centuries.

Salt came inland from the Cheshire wiches. Wool went out from the granges and farmsteads of the Dales to markets at Halifax, Ripon and Kendal. Lead from Swaledale, coal from the Pennine edges, cloth, butter, oats and lime all moved too. And with the goods went information: prices, marriages, deaths, which farmer had lost sheep to the winter, who had fallen out with whom. For a scattered hamlet like Keld or Langstrothdale, the packman was the news.

The names survive even where the traffic doesn't. Saltergate, Salterforth, Saltersford, Jagger Lane, Packhorse Lane, Badger Gate — badgers, confusingly, were corn dealers, not animals.

Reading the Land for Clues

These routes were never signposted. You learn to spot them by the things they left behind.

• Humpback bridges built for hooves, not wheels. Narrow, steeply cambered, often with no parapet or only a low one, and a raised crown so laden ponies didn't tumble. Moulton, Ivelet and Wycoller all have fine surviving examples.
• Flagged causeways across bog. Flat gritstone slabs laid end to end, now sunk and mossed over. Look for them on Ilkley Moor, across the Cheviot fringes and along the Roman roads the packmen cheerfully reused.
• Holloways. Sunken lanes cut two or three metres deep by generations of hooves and runoff. Some in the Dales are so deep they feel like tunnels in summer leaf.
• High, isolated inns. The Tan Hill Inn, the Kirkstone Pass Inn, the George at Hubberholme — all sit where the traffic was, not where the village was.
• Wide verges and stinted pastures. Strips of grazing legally set aside for travelling beasts, recorded in manorial documents and still visible as oddly generous roadside green.

Routes Worth Following

The classic Yorkshire crossing is the old salt and wool road over the top from Wharfedale into Wensleydale by way of Cam Head and Buckden, dropping to Hubberholme — where the George sits practically on the bridge, and the church has pews carved by the same craftsmen who made the packhorse crooks.

In Swaledale, the route between Keld and Gunnerside follows the river but the packmen often took the higher line above it, past ruins of lead smelting hearths. The path from Muker over to Kirkby Stephen remains one of the finest short days in the north, and you'll cross a genuine packhorse bridge at Ivelet on the way.

Wider afield, the old Kirkstone Pass route between Ambleside and Patterdale carried slate and wool across the Lakes; the Long Causeway above Todmorden linked the Calder and Ribble valleys; and in the Cheviots the drove and pack tracks around Alwinton still have that particular wide, soft-shouldered feel of a path made by animals rather than boots.

Inns That Kept the Trade Moving

Packhorse inns grew up roughly a day's journey apart — twelve to fifteen miles was the rule of thumb, because that was what a loaded train could manage. They were built for function: a long, low frontage, a wide arch or yard for the beasts, stabling, and beer strong enough to be worth the stop.

Look for a few telltale features. Stone mounting blocks by the door. A yard behind rather than a garden. Very old, very smoke-blackened beams. And a menu that leans on oats, bacon and cheese rather than anything fashionable — the packmen's diet, preserved by accident.

Walking Them Today: Practical Notes

• Take a paper map. Packhorse routes often run between waymarked rights of way, along old bridleways and unrecorded trods. The Ordnance Survey explorer sheets for the Dales show most of them, but the subtlety is in the field.
• Boots, not trainers. These are wet, stony, heavily drained paths. Expect standing water in the flagged sections whatever the forecast.
• Check for stiles versus gates. Genuine packhorse routes use gates and gaps, never stiles — a stile is proof the traffic was human.
• Respect the working landscape. Close gates, keep dogs on leads around livestock in spring, and don't assume a green track is a public right of way just because it looks ancient.
• Time your pub stop. Remote upland inns keep strange hours out of season. Ring ahead if you're counting on a lunch.

Why These Paths Still Matter

It's easy to treat the Dales as a scenic backdrop. But the reason the landscape looks the way it does — the barns, the field patterns, the villages perched where they are — is trade. The packhorse routes weren't leisure trails; they were the arteries of a remote economy that had to move goods over ground no wheel could cross.

Walk one slowly and you're following a route chosen by people who knew exactly how much a pony could carry, how far it could go before dark, and where the ground would hold. That's a kind of expertise worth respecting. It's also the best possible reason to take the long way round.