The Hardknott Pass stands at a maximum elevation of 393 m (1,289 ft).[1] The road descends steeply at a gradient of 30% (1 in 3) into the Duddon Valley.[4] At the eastern end of the pass is Cockley Beck farm, built in the 1860s and owned by the National Trust. The route from Hardknott leads eastward towards the Wrynose Pass and Ambleside.[3][5]
The pass is described as one of the most challenging roads in Britain.[5] A series of hairpin bends make visibility difficult in various places,[6] and the road surface is in poor condition and slippery when wet.[7] The pass is often closed in winter due to ice that makes the route impassable for vehicles.[8][9] Traffic ascending the pass has priority as advised by the Highway Code.[10]
The challenging 1 in 3 gradients, steeper than the mountain stages of European bicycle races including the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia,[7] draw endurance cyclists.[11] It is part of the annual Fred Whitton Challenge, a 112-mile (180 km) ride around the Lake District.[12] An "average" cyclist who was trained over six weeks for a 2019 Eurosport documentary called England's Toughest Climb failed to complete the route.[7][13]
History
A road over the pass was built by the Romans around AD 110 to link the coastal fort and baths at Ravenglass with their garrisons at Ambleside and Kendal.[14][15] The Romans called this road the Tenth Highway.[16] The road fell into disrepair after the Romans left Britain in the early 5th century, becoming an unpaved packhorse route used to transport lead and agricultural goods.[15][16] By the early Middle Ages, it was known as the Waingate ("cart road") or Wainscarth ("cart pass"): there is an 1138 record of a party of monks traversing it in an oxcart.[17]
Hardknott pass and its surrounding area fell within the domain of the Lords of Millom, being situated between the headwaters of the Esk and Duddon. Grazing and hunting rights were given to the monks of Furness Abbey by the Lords of Millom in the 13th century, which they held until the Dissolution of the Monasteries (1536–41).
In the 1880s an association of hoteliers, the English Lake District Association, financed improvements to the road in the hope of encouraging tourist excursions by carriage; by 1891 the scheme was judged to be "not the success that was anticipated".[18] Nevertheless, the route had some popularity with cyclists and early motorists, with the Cyclists' Touring Club 1911 Guide to North-West England describing the old coach road as "difficult going West, cruel coming East".[19] The first motor vehicles were taken over the Hardknott and Wrynose passes, from the Eskdale side, in 1913.[20]
In 1936, the Cumberland Highways Committee considered, and rejected, a proposal to make the pass more accessible to motorised vehicles by laying down a new road surface and making other improvements. However, during the Second World War the War Office used the area for tank training, completely destroying the existing road surface. After the war the damage was repaired and the road tarmaced. A decade after the local government had rejected opening the highway to vehicles, the war's legacy had inadvertently created a direct motor route between Ambleside and Eskdale for the first time.
The courses of the Roman and modern roads are not identical. The Roman highway is to the north of the modern road on the western side of the pass and to the south on the eastern side.[16]
^Armstrong, A. M.; Mawer, A.; Stenton, F.M.; Dickins, B. (1950). The Place-names of Cumberland. Vol. 1: Eskdale, Cumberland and Leath Wards. Cambridge University Press. p. 343. OCLC1154195833.
^Marshall, John Duncan; Walton, John K. (1981). The Lake Counties from 1830 to the Mid-Twentieth Century: A Study in Regional Change. Manchester University Press. p. 195. ISBN9780719008245.
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