Exploring Heritage Paths and Ancient Tracks

Reading the Landscape Underfoot

Some of the best walking in Britain follows paths that were old before the Normans arrived. Drovers' roads, Roman military ways and packhorse trods were built with a purpose, and that purpose suits modern boots rather well: they take the gentlest gradients, cross the firmest ground and link the places that were worth reaching. Once you learn to recognise them, a sunken green lane in Devon or a stony, windswept track in the Cheviots stops being anonymous and starts telling a story.

The clues are modest but remarkably consistent. Wide, hedged lanes with a stony spine and broad grassy verges were made for livestock, not carts. A path that runs dead straight for more than a mile across open country is almost always Roman. A narrow stone bridge with a low parapet, just wide enough for one beast at a time, tells you it was built for packhorses carrying panniers.

Drovers' Roads and the Cattle Highways

For centuries, cattle, sheep, geese and pigs were walked to market on the hoof. Welsh black cattle travelled east to the great London markets; Scottish beasts came south through the border passes. A drover might cover fifteen to twenty miles a day, grazing the animals as he went, paying tolls at turnpikes and sleeping at inns that still stand beside the road, often with a long, narrow paddock behind them for holding stock overnight.

Many of these routes survive almost intact. The Monks' Trod crosses the Cambrian Mountains; the drove roads around Tregaron and Abergwesyn in Ceredigion remain unfenced and gloriously empty; the Long Mynd in Shropshire carries a fine old drove road along its spine; and the Cleveland drovers' road still runs over the North York Moors. Look for wide, rutted tracks with heather and bilberry on either side, and for small stone pounds or folds where animals were penned. They are rough underfoot and genuinely boggy after rain, so wear boots with a stiff sole and deep tread, and carry a spare pair of socks.

Roman Roads: The Long Straight Lines

Roman engineers built for legions and supply trains, not scenery, and their roads are unapologetically direct. The classic example for walkers is High Street in the Lake District, running from Ambleside over the fells towards Penrith and topping out close to 800 metres, with the road's agger — the raised, cambered bank — still clearly visible in places. Sarn Helen threads through mid and south Wales; the Peddars Way runs arrow-straight across Norfolk; The Street crosses the Peak District; Dere Street pushes into Northumberland.

Roman roads are usually raised, well drained and firm, which makes them excellent in winter when everything else has turned to slurry. The trade-off is that they can be brutally hard on the feet, and their determination to ignore contours means a long, steady climb with no let-up. Expect hedgerows, small quarries beside the route and occasional squared stones in field walls that were robbed from the road itself.

Packhorse Bridges and the Salt Ways

Before decent roads, heavy goods moved on the backs of horses and mules. The routes they used were called packhorse ways, and the bridges built for them have a very particular look: narrow, single-span, often humpbacked, with low parapets so that panniers could swing clear. Good examples survive in the Forest of Bowland, around Wycoller and Foulridge in Lancashire, near Slippery Ford in West Yorkshire, and scattered through the Derbyshire Peak.

Watch for names as you go. Saltersford, Saltergate and Salt Way point to routes carrying salt from the Cheshire brine towns. Causey, causeyway and paviours' names signal a deliberately paved path — a "causey" — laid to stop hooves churning the ground to mud. Some of these paved sections still show grooves worn by centuries of traffic.

Walking Them Well: Practicalities

• Use the 1:25,000 Explorer maps. Ancient tracks often show as dashed lines, and the detail of gates, walls and field boundaries matters far more here than on waymarked trails.
• Navigation on a drovers' road can be genuinely testing when cloud drops over open moor. Carry a compass and know how to take a bearing; do not rely on a phone signal.
• Waterproof jacket and overtrousers, always — upland routes are exposed and weather turns quickly. In summer, midges make a head net worthwhile in the west and north.
• Livestock: cattle with calves can be protective. Give them a wide berth, do not walk between a cow and her calf, and if you have a dog, keep it close and under control.
• Leave gates as you find them, and in England and Wales stick to public footpaths and bridleways. In Scotland, open access is broader under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003, but responsibilities still apply.
• Take all litter home, and keep dogs on a short lead around ground-nesting birds between March and July.

A Few Routes Worth the Boots

If you want to start somewhere specific, the Ridgeway in southern England is the classic introduction — an ancient chalk trackway running for over eighty miles with long views and few fences. The Peddars Way pairs well with the Norfolk coast for a weekend. In Wales, the Monks' Trod gives a wild, high crossing of the Cambrian Mountains with genuine solitude. In the Yorkshire Dales, the old monastic and packhorse ways around Keld and Muker offer short days packed with bridges, causeys and drovers' inns.

Walk them quietly, in small numbers, and with half an eye on the ground beneath you. Every wall corner, worn stone and dog-legged bend is a layer of history, and the most rewarding days on these old routes are the ones where you stop reading the map for a minute and simply look at the path instead.