page_title: Ridgeway (road)
section_title: Courses
hierarchical_section_title: Ridgeway (road) / Courses
caption_attribution_description: English: The Ridgeway, looking eastwards, with Uffington Castle ringfort in distance on left
context_page_description: Ridgeways are a particular type of ancient road that exploits the hard surface of hilltop ridges for use as unpaved, zero-maintenance roads, though they often have the disadvantage of steeper gradients along their courses, and sometimes quite narrow widths. Before the advent of turnpikes or toll roads, ridgeway trails continued to provide the firmest and safest cart tracks. They are generally an opposite to level, valley-bottom, paved roads, which require engineering work to shore up and maintain. Unmaintained valley routes may require greater travelling distances than ridgeways.
  Prehistoric roads in Europe often variously comprised stretches of ridgeway above the line of springs, sections of causeway through bog and marsh, and other trackways of neither sort which crossed flat country.
  A revival of interest in ancient roads and recreational walking in the 19th century brought the concept back into common use. Some ancient routes, in particular The Ridgeway National Trail of southern England, have been reprised as long-distance footpaths.
context_section_description: In rugged parts of central Germany, ridgeways tend to strictly follow the watershed line proper, since traversing steep slopes was difficult for wheeled vehicles and uncomfortable for foot travellers unless someone had cut a track into the hillside and shored it up against washouts and slips. However, deviations around high peaks were common, usually taking the south side of the peak, presumably because the warmer side was usually drier. On flatter British hills, the line of the tracks often runs a little below the actual crest of the ridge, possibly to afford some shelter from the wind or to avoid travellers presenting themselves to marauders as a target on the skyline.
  The discomfort of following ridgeways arises from their exposure to harsh weather and the fact that they are rarely level. The ridge line rises and falls. Moreover, at some point the ridge ends, so that the route must descend to ford a stream before rising again to follow the next ridge. Loads on two-wheeled carts had to be constantly shifted to the back during descents and to the front during ascents so that the animals could draw efficiently.
  In medieval and later times ridgeways in England were used as drovers roads.
  Since ridgeways were informal routes, and the rounded tops of many British and German ridges might be hundreds of metres wide, the track might change seasonally, or spontaneously, if any land alongside the trail appeared drier and firmer. But where the tracks were seen as marking boundaries, the course could no longer change without causing a property dispute. English ridgeway routes became fixed in the course of enclosures beginning about 1750.
  Notable prehistoric ridgeways include:
  in England
  The Ridgeway between Avebury and Streatley in southern England
  The Icknield Way on the escarpment of the Chiltern Hills and extending towards Norfolk in southern England
  The Old Shaftesbury Drove and the Ox Drove leading from Shaftesbury and Blandford to Salisbury
  in Germany
  The Rennweg (Arnsberger Wald), an old trade route along the Arnsberg Forest
  The Brüderstrasse between Cologne and Siegen, Germany
  The Rennsteig from Gerstungen through the Thuringian mountains of Germany, restored from 1896 onwards as a 169-kilometre trail
caption: The Ridgeway (Uffington Castle ringfort in distance on left)
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